CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 The holidays are expensive, and checkout counters now offer more payment options than ever: cash, credit, or buy now, pay later. While cash and credit are traditional methods, more people say spreading payments out is helping them enjoy the season without breaking their budget.<\/p>\n
Holiday shoppers turn to buy now, pay later options to manage expenses<\/p>\n
Buy now, pay later apps have become increasingly visible while shopping online and in stores. For Arturo Pena III, a college student, these payment options weren’t something he initially considered until he found himself in a specific situation.<\/p>\n
“I never paid much attention to it until I was in that position where I was like okay I really want this, I don’t have the money for it, but I will” Pena said.<\/p>\n
With the holidays now in full swing, how you pay can make a significant difference in managing expenses. Buy now, pay later options are appearing more frequently across various platforms. Some popular apps include: Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, PayPal and Zip.<\/p>\n
“Even at some stores they have Klarna which is a popular buy now pay later option. Even on the TikTok shop I started to buy gifts there for Christmas and they had the option Affirm,” Pena said.<\/p>\n
Pena typically uses these services for bigger purchases or items he knows won’t be available for long periods.<\/p>\n
“I really wanted some Wicked Owala bottles that were limited edition and I knew I had to get them,” Pena said.<\/p>\n
The most common setup is called a “pay in four” system, which splits purchases into four interest-free payments. When payment due dates arrive, Pena manages them like any other bill by using auto pay and monitoring email reminders.<\/p>\n
“They’ll send you an email either a week before or couple of days before saying hey your payment is coming up,” Pena said.<\/p>\n
Like most bills, payments can be made early if desired. Pena often pays ahead of schedule to get payments out of the way.<\/p>\n
His payments typically range between $15 and $30 at most, which he considers similar to everyday expenses.<\/p>\n
“Usually I tell myself you know what? I pay $30 to pump gas or if it’s $15 I get myself a $15 meal at Chic-Fil-A or Whataburger,” Pena said.<\/p>\n
Each buy now, pay later app comes with different rules and payment options, making it important to read the fine print before committing to any service.<\/p>\n
Consumer experts say the best option fits your budget and is easy to track.<\/p>\n
For the latest local news updates, click here<\/a>, or download the KRIS 6 News App.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 The holidays are expensive, and checkout counters now offer more payment options than ever:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[43264,33164,2050,43265,155,157,156,43266,18711,2786,43267,2349,3370],"class_list":["post-92079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-affirm","tag-apps","tag-budget","tag-buy-now-pay-later","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-expenses","tag-gifts","tag-holiday","tag-klarna","tag-money","tag-southside-corpus-christi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}