Welcome to what Payjoy and friends have been doing for a while now.
They claim to be "finance for the next billion" and ship a module that can be preloaded on OEM's phones (and placed into the Android 'nondisable' list) to allow the phone to be heavily restricted after you enable the "Payjoy lock" as a condition of financing for either the phone or some kind of microloan.
The one place I saw this being used in the US was Samsung phones being sold by Rent-A-Center; a lot of pictures of old Galaxy phones being disabled after the rent-to-own lease had expired or payment had lapsed are out there, too.
Thanks for the context. It’s just insane to me that things like this exist alongside $30 Android Go phones. A high end phone is an unnecessary luxury, and this infrastructure probably has some cost to the rest of us (bugs and diverted developer hours). I can understand why a “gig economy” worker might need a midrange phone, for instance, but decent used devices are very affordable.
I guess people finance other luxuries, too—rims are a great example—but those don’t seem to require digital repo men.
To add even more context: This is to finance those $30 Android Go phones. This is for the 'developing nations' schtick. They aren't Payjoy Locking some super high end phone here, it's gonna be the $40 no-name Android handset.
It's also to reuse the phone later as collateral again on another microloan, almost like digitally pawning the phone off for twenty bucks each time.
Welcome to what Payjoy and friends have been doing for a while now.
They claim to be "finance for the next billion" and ship a module that can be preloaded on OEM's phones (and placed into the Android 'nondisable' list) to allow the phone to be heavily restricted after you enable the "Payjoy lock" as a condition of financing for either the phone or some kind of microloan.
The one place I saw this being used in the US was Samsung phones being sold by Rent-A-Center; a lot of pictures of old Galaxy phones being disabled after the rent-to-own lease had expired or payment had lapsed are out there, too.
Also, a Google module for the same has been available for a while - https://9to5google.com/2020/11/07/google-device-lock-control...
Thanks for the context. It’s just insane to me that things like this exist alongside $30 Android Go phones. A high end phone is an unnecessary luxury, and this infrastructure probably has some cost to the rest of us (bugs and diverted developer hours). I can understand why a “gig economy” worker might need a midrange phone, for instance, but decent used devices are very affordable.
I guess people finance other luxuries, too—rims are a great example—but those don’t seem to require digital repo men.
To add even more context: This is to finance those $30 Android Go phones. This is for the 'developing nations' schtick. They aren't Payjoy Locking some super high end phone here, it's gonna be the $40 no-name Android handset.
It's also to reuse the phone later as collateral again on another microloan, almost like digitally pawning the phone off for twenty bucks each time.