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In a world of Lifetime free cards, are bnpl services worth keeping?

the_collector

TF Premier
Hi All,

I've been on a spree closing all my bnpl accounts.

There was a time when these bnpl services offered discounts and cashbacks just like credit cards do ( not to the same extent but still good enough).

Now I find it extremely difficult to find offers and i always end up paying by my credit card instead.

This made me think, are bnpl service really worth keeping active?

Is the ease of transacting more beneficial than the discount/cashback you could get from a credit card?

Especially, when credit cards are so much more lucrative with their discounts and cashbacks.

Moreover, many bnpl services report to credit bureaus, which show up as active loans in their respective fields.

Here are some of the bnpl services I had and ended up closing:

1. Ola money postpaid plus - It started out great, offers on every cab ride I would take, I used to also get a lot of offers through movies and swiggy/Zomato using this. They've just disappeared. Everytime I need to use ola , I simply pay by cash or I have my card linked.

2. Lazy pay:
Same as above, I don't see any offers anymore and find it difficult to find a use case for it.

3. Flipkart pay later: I have the SBI cashback CB and fk axis, both offer 5% on my spends. Find no use for this.

4. Paytm postpaid: similar story to 1 and 2, they use to give offers for pvr bookings and sometimes for food, but rarely seen anything that is of actual benefit in recent times.

5. Slice and postpe: Slice used to give the best offers hand down before RBI came hounding on them. One of my first credit lines and I used it extensively before they changed the entire model.

6. Mobikwik pay later: I don't know why I opened this. Never used it. Closed.

The only active one I have currently is SIMPL.
I see plenty offers going about and find it convenient at times to pay via SIMPL on swiggy and Zomato. More importantly, SIMPL does NOT report to the credit bureaus which is a huge plus. Unless things change drastically, I won't be closing this one.

For individuals that find it difficult to get their hands on credit cards, I can see the benefits of having a bnpl service active. However for ones that have multiple credit cards, I find it very difficult to justify keeping them open.

I would like to know if you guys have any bnpl services active and what is your use case for them?
 
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