Gird your wallets, my weak-willed friends, ‘cos Afterpay – already the scourge of those of us with the impulse control of a 13-year-old at the mall with mum’s credit card – has just launched its newest and most diabolical designs on your hard-earned weekly cash: Play, i.e. Afterpay for holidays.
You might be thinking, Uh, duh, Afterpay already do that with Jetstar, to which I say: you’re absolutely right! They do, and I am that much poorer per payslip for it. But this isn’t mere flights they’re breaking down into deceptively affordable fortnightly chunks. It’s whole holiday packages to all the most enticing millennial destinations – Hawaii, Bali, Japan, the USA – and including experiences like music festivals, yoga retreats and a fucking trek to the Mt Everest Base Camp.
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The website explains that the idea is for you to pick a destination/package, pay it off in small instalments leading up to your big getaway, and then enjoy the experience debt- and hassle-free. Which, sure! Sounds infallible!
Except that Afterpay is already making about $28.4 million from everyone’s late fees, and while $60/week for a “community building” experience in Cambodia might seem like nothing now, once you factor in all your ASOS impulse buys it might be a very different story.
Is any of this going to stop me from smashing the “buy” button so hard my computer explodes as soon as they have European destinations available? No. Should it? Possibly. Is an inevitable collapse or government crackdown on Afterpay looming on the horizon? Almost certainly, so let’s ride this future-mortgaging fantasy train while we still can!
