I think that there are several different things being conflated here.
Firstly, the oft-repeated "UK fares are more expensive that anywhere else and should come down". Obviously a forum full of railway enthusiasts are going to be in favour of cheaper train travel, it seems a no-brainer - but never takes into account things like the different standards of living between other EU countries (i.e. a train ticket is more expensive in the UK than in Italy/ Spain etc but then so are house prices, so is a pint of beer, so are petrol prices... ), so I'm always a little sceptical. Nobody is going to argue in favour of *higher* fares on here, granted, but I think that sometimes people enjoy making comparisons with fares in countries that have much cheaper standards of living
Secondly, ethics of the "loan" market. I have mixed feelings about some of these companies - they might be parasites or they might be stopping people getting into trouble with dodgier lenders. However horrible Wonga's APR was, it was at least regulated and protected, rather than the murky world of loan sharks. And I do take on board the point about APR not being a great yardstick when assessing the cost of a loan intended to be repaid within a month. Do these companies encourage additional purchases that people can't afford or is it better to spread the cost rather than people making huge sacrifices to be able to buy something up front. We accept that people need mortgages because they can't purchase a house "up front", we accept that people buy season tickets over a year of monthly payments, but we get snobby when other people need loans to afford other things
Thirdly, there have always been companies trying to make money by making people spread purchases over months - when I were a lad it was "catalogues" like Littlewoods/ Grattan - nowadays you can buy clothes much cheaper so there's less need to get garments over six months. Let's not turn this thread into a "your generation vs my generation" debate, especially since nobody is going to come out of it well ("you can't afford to buy train tickets up front" - "well you couldn't afford to buy socks up front"). The point is that there's always been companies trying to encourage you to "buy now, pay later" - there are always going to be products advertised to people who "need" them - it's not a huge surprise that a firm has identified train tickets as a gap in the market to flog financial products. Maybe I've changed my shopping habits over the years, but I can't remember the last time I was offered a "Store Card" at the till, to sign me up to a long term financial commitment - may the rules changed. Odd to think of some of the things that people used to purchase outright/ need a loan for compared to today - "Generation Hire Purchase" needed loans for things that "Generation Wonga" take for granted but the same is true the other way round
That said, I don't like the idea that people need to borrow money to buy something like a train ticket (whether that says more about a generation of people who have very few savings or more about the cost of today's ticket prices, I don't know) - it feels wrong - but then maybe it was ever thus - I doubt my grandparents could have bought a train ticket to London without going to a loan shark etc