Dark Patterns in Digital Buy Now Pay Later Services

Abstract: Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is a financial service whereby customers defer payment on a purchase against a short-term debt. While BNPL services have a long history, digital invoice services are now the largest market for BNPL. For the study, two of the largest providers in Sweden, and their checkout interfaces were reviewed for dark patterns. Dark patterns are instances where designers exploit the knowledge of human behaviour (e.g., behavioural psychology) and cognition (e.g., cognitive psychology) in order to coerce the customers into performing target actions. For digital invoice services, the target actions are for the customers to select the credit instalments which profits their business model, as a large percentage of their income are from postponed payments. This study employs three research methods to answer the research questions “What existing dark patterns are identified in digital invoice services, and what are the impacts of dark patterns in the context of digital invoice services?”. First, existing dark patterns were identified through a systematic literature review. Second, the resulting dark patterns were applied to an analysis of the two digital invoice services, where ten dark patterns were identified. Finally, an interface of a digital invoice service was designed, prototyped, and evaluated to test the impact of the identified dark patterns in the context of digital invoice services. Analysis suggests that the users are being coerced through design into the target actions, which were selecting the credit instalments (X2 = 5.84, df=1). The results is being further discussed in means of the potential debt users face from dark patterns in financial interfaces.