With the carrier the subsidizing the phone is tied to you using the carrier's phone service for 2 or 3 years. The money they make on that makes up for whatever subsidy they gave on the phone.
With a financial institution that subsidizes your phone what other service will they charge you for to make up for the cost of the subsidy?
Resellers don’t pay the sticker price, they buy the phones with a discount and they’re sure to charge a premium or interest.
I’m not saying it’s going to be either faster, better, or cheaper. The carriers are like a cartel that is abusing the phone locking system and should face the consequences. As the things are right now, they’re even locking unlocked phones to their service with immunity and individual users cannot effort to sue them or even worse users are not even allowed to sue them because of forced arbitration clauses. Should nothing change in this system because it benefits a certain range of companies?
With a financial institution that subsidizes your phone what other service will they charge you for to make up for the cost of the subsidy?