High interest rates: Get into debt with “Black Friday”.

“Singles Day”, “Black Friday”, “Cyber ​​Monday”: Shopping these days can lead to dangerous debt. Regardless of whether it is a credit card, installment payment or overdraft: the interest rates are high.

Not only retailers are looking forward to the upcoming “Black Friday”, but especially payment service providers such as Klarna and PayPal. “Buy now, pay later” is the principle. Buy now, pay later – or never.

Right now, around Black Friday and with Christmas in a few weeks, people are buying heavily again. This has increasingly been happening online in recent years.

TikTokers make their debts public

One person who has slipped deep into debt as a result is TikToker Leari Cheri. She liked to shop a lot on credit and at some point she lost track of things: “When the first reminders came, I was scared,” she says. She has many reminders ““just threw it away” and at some point started to “ignore it completely.” And she is not alone in this, as a questionable trend on the social media platform TikTok shows: Here, users are outdoing each other with huge amounts of debt.

And in the best case scenario, you will find yourself in debt counseling. For example with Matthias Klusmann from Frankfurt. If there is a delay, Klusmann sees a huge problem, especially with payment service providers like Klarna: “Every single purchase – even if it is only 1.99 euros – will be sent a separate reminder and sent to collection. In addition, high late payment interest charges apply. The costs are exploding.” Debts are processed differently at the bank: a loan, an overdraft, a credit card mean three different claims, but only one creditor.

Overdraft interest of more than 17 percent

But interest rates have also risen sharply at the bank, as Josefine Lietzau from the magazine “Finanztip” analyzed. The overdraft interest rates currently range from seven to more than 17 percent. The average is around twelve percent. Particularly piquant: The overdraft interest rate rises significantly faster than, for example, savings interest, which the consulting firm Barkow Consulting has proven in a study. While the average daily interest rate rose by 1.38 percentage points, the overdraft rate increased by an average of 3.62 percentage points.

Nicole B. (name changed by the editors) clearly felt these drastic interest rate increases: due to short-time work and the loss of her part-time job, she suddenly had 1,000 euros less in her account from one day to the next. She lived more and more on credit. But that doesn’t work everywhere in everyday life. For example in the supermarket. Here you can’t buy on account, but have to pay immediately in cash or by card. Through these payments and also the rent, she automatically slipped into the overdraft, which in her case is 14 percent.

But these high interest rates are definitely justified, says “Finanztip” editor Lietzau, because “with the overdraft, the banks take a high risk of getting their money back.” The amount of the overdraft also depends on what kind of customers the bank has. “If a bank tends to have worse customers, then the overdraft will also be higher than at another bank.”

Punctual payers are bad ones Credit card customers

Despite this risk, living on credit is a lucrative business model for many companies, as the example of credit card interest shows. For example, if a customer is interested in a credit card and the conditions seem ideal, that is deceptive. Good earnings, no debts, no Schufa entries, that is absolutely creditworthy, but that is exactly what makes consumers unattractive customers for credit card companies. Being too good a customer is actually bad for business.

Because only those who use the card regularly generate sufficient sales. If customers then forego functions such as a credit line and installment payment function, mind you with interest rates of up to 24 percent, the credit card application is often rejected.

The good news at the end: The EU has passed a new consumer credit directive. For every purchase with deferred payment and installment credit, it should be mandatory to check the buyer’s solvency. Specifically, this means that anyone who fails will no longer be able to make unlimited purchases on credit on Black Friday in the future.