Citibank Equal Payment Plan, page-33

you're not really following this at all.

there are two models for splitit

1) deferred payment whereby the merchant receives their revenue in installments and the bank allegedly takes the risk although i struggle to envisage the bank releasing further funds to a merchant once the user has defaulted. Either way, the obvious issue with this is that there are next to no merchants that can afford to have their revenue paid in installments over a few months let alone over 12 months. This is completely different to layby/interest free models where the merchant receives their money on day 1. As is reinforced by the fact that no merchants use this service, it is a terrible offer and the other buy now/pay later schemes trump it in almost every way (from a merchant perspective). The only thing splitit has going for it is the seamless integration with your card, however this is irrelevant when no merchants offer it as a payment method.

2) where the payment is released to the merchant up front. no one has any idea where this funding is coming from aside from the fact it is not coming from splitit and it is not coming from the bank. a credit card/personal loan would charge a minimum of 12% interest for a loan period of 12 months, how a third party financier is going to be able to beat this significantly is beyond me. There has been absolutely no concrete explanation from splitit as to how this would work and the success of the business hinges on it.