I'm really curious to know what the typical percentage of sales come from BNPLs, if even in a specific industry. I also did my own quick research to find out how e.g. Klarna made money and was surprised at how much higher the cut is they take vs cards. But it makes sense since a lot of people probably use cards to pay the BNPL provider.

Another thing for users: BNPLs help you build up your credit. If you have a credit card that only has a limit of $200 and you want to buy something for $250, you can use the BNPL option and pay down the credit card each time the charge posts. You create a payment history. Europeans, I know this all sounds ridiculous to you, but we just love credit over here in the US.

From my experience in the finance dept of a few large Australian apparel retailers, I see BNPL sales from online at around 35% of sales dollars and in the brick & mortar stores around 1-3% of sales dollars.

I’ve actually been curious how this Klarna works out for the consumer and found this article very insightful.

I would like to know the meaning of the title though, what is “legibility” in this case?

I took it in the Ribbonfarm sense (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...), in that they're providing credit to people who weren't otherwise legible to the banking system.

In this case, I think it means to clarify the nature of the business and is a play on your exact sentiment. The article is providing legibility to buy now pay later businesses (like Klarna). Likely the word was chosen to match the initialism.

It's just an alternative sequence of words with the acronym "BNPL" which means "Here's how BNPL businesses work". "Legibility" means roughly "ease of understanding".

How is fraud / charge backs handled with BNPL? Who owns the liability, etc?

Earlier the buyers were made light by their pocket with sub-prime loan financial engineering, now the target has moved to businesses with this new financial engineering. Sounds bit worrisome.

The article addresses systemic concerns with BNPLs fairly well, is there anything about the arguments OP makes regarding this kind of consumption being far less risky at a macro level than the kind of wizardry that led to the mortgage crisis that you specifically find unconvincing?

Businesses are supposed to be sophisticated enough that they should be allowed to spend ~3% more of revenue on customer acquisition if they want to.