The new payment model of home appliance stores hides the high cost of traps and banks

All along, installment payments are the model adopted by bank credit cards. Recently, the Economic Herald reporter found in an interview that many home appliance stores in Jinan introduced a consumption model that can be paid in installments without a credit card, and this model is to a certain extent Can meet the consumer's purchase needs, but the cost is several times the bank's credit card installment payment charges in the same period.

Unsecured, unsecured approvals only one hour

On the morning of the 3rd, at the entrance of Hongmeidian in Jinan, a big billboard was written on the billboard: No credit card can be used to stage the issue. There are still 2 mobile phone numbers on the billboard. "Without a credit card, can I pay in installments?" The Herald reporter was deeply curious.

On the first floor of the store, the Herald reporter consulted with several sales staff about the issue of no credit card staging, but the answers given were surprisingly unequivocal: I don't know. A salesperson said: "Instalments are generally spent on banking cooperation. Except for banks, whose credibility is so good? I am very curious."

According to the telephone on the billboard, the reporter and a staff member surnamed Liu contacted the person who said that the advertisement claimed was in fact a letter period. It refers to the guide reporter to their help desk on the phone.

According to the guidelines of the phone, the Herald reporter came to the front desk of a more secure, non-credit-card instalment. There is no other device on the table except a laptop. There were several staff members at the scene, and the Herald reporter noticed that it was obvious that they were not employees of Gome, either from the tooling or from the work card.

A staff member who claims to be called Liu Kai, who is affiliated with Gitzo Financial Group, has entered into cooperation agreements with GOME and Suning in Jinan respectively, and began to provide consumers with a different installment payment mode with bank cards. "Gitzo's installment payment can be easily done without bank cardholders. No mortgage, no guarantee, approval time is usually 30-60 minutes."

Herald reporter learned that, in the Gome stores, consumers are prepared to pay in installments, only need to purchase more than 600 yuan of products (a loan limit to buy 2 products) can be divided into 6, 9, 12, 15 payment, single The amount of the loan varies from 600 yuan to 10,000 yuan. Customers can choose to pay 10%-30% down depending on the type of goods they choose. For mobile phones, home appliances, desktop computers, office communications equipment and other products with a loan amount higher than 3,000 yuan, the down payment is 20%. For notebook computers and fashion electronic products with a loan amount higher than 3,000 yuan, the down payment is increased to 30%.

"Our application is very simple. Usually it will be approved in about an hour." Liu Kai explained, "The consumer only needs to show his personal identity card and another form of identity and complete the application form. After the approval, the company will arrange payment. Consumers can bring their favorite products home."

"This new business has not brought much surprise for the time being. It is still not enough to boost sales, but everything has to be tried. There is no harm in introducing it first." A middle-level cadre of Gome said to the reporter in private.

"Free lunch" or high-interest snare

Although it is convenient and quick, there is almost no requirement for the lenders (only an ID is required to add another kind of identification, such as a social security card, driver's license, or even a student ID card), but the Herald reporter has compared it to the bank's credit card fees. It is found that the actual cost of this kind of seemingly simple procedures for payment in installments is much higher.

The Herald reporter used a TV and a laptop (a total of 7,500 yuan) as an example to allow Liu Kai to calculate how much it would take to pay about 12 payments. Liu Kai told the Herald’s reporter that the down payment should reach 40%, and the remaining period needs repayment of more than 500 yuan. "Our fee is between 0.8 and 1,000 parts per day, mainly interest, guarantee and service fees."

The daily interest rate is between 0.8 and 1/1000th of thousandths of a day, so the annual interest rate is as high as 29.2%-36.5%. At present, the benchmark interest rate for one-year loans of banks is 6.56%, then the former is 4.45 to 5.56 times that of the latter.

Also in Gome, China Merchants Bank has launched an installment payment business. The amount of money consumed ranges from 500 yuan to 50,000 yuan. If it is repaid in 12 installments, the fee will be 0.55% per month. Calculated in this way, the annual interest rate is only 6.6%, which is only slightly higher than the one-year bank loan interest rate.

On the surface, Gitzo's installment payment can be easily used by bank credit card users to purchase home appliances using installments, but in fact, the high cost is unbearable to ordinary consumers.

Yang Yinan, an account manager at a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of Jinan, believes that there is no free lunch in the world. As a business organization, Gitzo’s goal is to profit from each business. The use of installment payment will inevitably lead to the possibility of bad debts, plus the interest expense of occupying funds. For cost considerations, the risks will definitely be passed on to instalment users. Although "no credit card staging" makes people ticklish, in fact, businesses will certainly not make a loss of sales. Consumers still have to use their eyes to carefully identify, so as not to fall into high-interest "traps."