Pins on the pocket? The House of Representatives wants a ban

Suppose you see a nice pair of pants in a store that you want to buy immediately. But you won’t get your salary for a few days and you have too little money now.

In many online shops you can still buy these pants through the “pay later” option. Payment services Klarna and Adyen now also want to offer this option on ATMs, i.e. in physical stores. Regarding the concern of the House of Representatives and the supervisory authority of the Financial Markets Authority (AFM).

If you choose the ‘pay later’ option when you make a purchase, you are actually borrowing money from the payment service, such as Klarna, Riverty and Billink. The amount must be paid back within a maximum of three months. But these services do not have to meet strict requirements for lenders, such as the obligation to prove whether you earn enough to repay the loan.

“There is no test as to whether the loan is a good idea for you,” says Teun van der Velden, Credit team manager at the AFM. “If you use the pay later facility, you may have you that last week and you no longer have an overview. We care about debt collection and how you use debt every time.”

Even though you officially have to be 18 to pay after that, young people often use the option:

The later payment services do not meet the strict requirements because they charge little or no interest. But if you miss payment terms, you often have to deal with high reminder costs. This means that some pay later services earn 40 percent of their income. They earn the rest from the fees that stores pay.

Van der Velden finds it even more difficult to cancel payments in physical stores. When shopping online, customers often choose ‘pay later’ because they want to try on the shoes or pants first. “That argument no longer exists offline,” says Van der Velden. “Then there is often a financial need: I don’t have the money, so I press the ‘pay after’ option hand’. Then problems quickly arise.”

These problems are also a fault on the part of Utrecht councilor Linda Voortman. She appealed to vendors in the town council not to include ‘paying later’. “When you’re a bit younger, it’s quite a shame to buy those nice shoes or that nice shirt in this way. I think we need to protect people from themselves a bit.”

Some stores already offer a pay later option, such as clothing chain H&M. The customer must first log in online to the site. The option through the ATM is new. Shops will soon be able to decide for themselves whether they want to participate.

As a result of new European regulations, post-payment providers will be subject to stricter rules and AFM guidelines from November 2026. Councilor Voortman believes that national politics should take steps more quickly. “We are working hard together to prevent people from getting into debt. Let’s not make the problems worse this way.”

According to Secretary of State Teun Struycken (Legal Protection), it is not possible to introduce the stricter rules earlier. The House of Representatives unanimously passed a motion on Tuesday to ban “pay it later” in physical stores. The Secretary of State will respond in mid-November.