My carrier doesn't subsidize phones, rather they will simply finance your purchase of a phone that you pay back in monthly chunks along with your phone contract

My carrier doesn't subsidize phones, rather they will simply finance your purchase of a phone that you pay back in monthly chunks along with your phone contract (so when your phone is paid off, your monthly bills drop). So even for people that don't want to pay a lump-sum for a phone, you can imagine that it would be possible to just split those two businesses into "carrier" and "phone purchase financer." However, presumably in that case the latter would have to charge higher finance fees than a carrier with integrated financing, because they'd be assuming the risk of financing without the extra profit that comes from the monthly phone contract. So since the integration of the two allows lower fees, and people lovvvvve lower fees, well... the integration of carriers and phone financing isn't very surprising...