TY - THES ID - 137032728 TI - Does financial literacy in BNPL users influence how they perceive the AU - Vandendriessche, Klaus AU - Vadasz, Tamas AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Economie en Bedrijfswetenschappen. Opleiding Master of Business Administration (Brussels) PY - 2023 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Economie en Bedrijfswetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137032728 AB - This dissertation investigates what variables influence the user’s risk perception for Buy-Now Pay-Later credit products, mainly the influence of financial literacy and critical thinking on how a consumer perceives the related risks. An inquiry into the existing academic literature and up-to-date media sources has signaled the young consumer’s increasing reliability on unsecured retail debt, the associated risks, and opaque communication by BNPL providers. On the one hand, BNPL is a convenient and trendy tool to fill the void between a need/want and a paycheck. On the other hand, it is a serious debt product that currently falls out of the scope of stricter credit regulation. As debt products are inherently risky, the dissertation's secondary goal is to draft some advice on safeguarding consumers from possible issues relating to BNPL. The paper also investigates how various variables determine the likeliness of a respondent to use BNPL, including gender, age, the use of a credit card, and employment situation. In conclusion, the analysis has shown that financial literacy and being critical of financial benefits positively influence a consumer’s risk-assessing ability. It was also found that the provider’s conditions do not sufficiently warn consumers of the related risks and that people who realise they overspend using BNPL can better estimate the risks. The BNPL user archetype is a female student aged between 18 and 21 with a job and access to a credit card (for this sample). ER -