Apple CEO Tim Cook poses for a portrait next to a lineup of new MacBook Airs as he enters the Steve Jobs Theater during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on 6 June 2022.
Chris Tweet | AFP | fake images
–
–
–
A wholly owned subsidiary of Apple will check users’ credit and provide short-term loans to users for Apple Pay Later, the tech giant said.
The new lending service, which will compete with similar offerings from Affirm and PayPal, was announced at Apple’s developer conference on Monday. Later this year, when the company’s new iOS 16 iPhone software is released, users will be able to purchase products with Apple Pay and pay the balance in four equal payments over six weeks as a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service. .
Apple has partnered with Mastercard, which interfaces with providers and offers a white-label BNPL product called Quotas, which Apple is using. Apple Card issuer Goldman Sachs is also participating as a technical issuer for the loans and is the official sponsor of BIN, the company said. But Apple is not using Goldman’s credit decisions or its balance sheet to issue the loans.
–
The behind-the-scenes structure of Apple’s new lending service, and the fact that it’s handling lending decisions, credit checks and loans, shows the iPhone giant’s strategy to bring the framework and infrastructure for its financial services internally as much as possible.
Apple has increasingly broken into the fintech industry, through its Wallet app and financial services that focus on making their iPhone more valuable and useful to users, who will be inclined to continue buying Apple hardware, which remains the main source of sales for the company.
Apple Pay Later loans are unlikely to matter to Apple in the short term, though they suggest the company could use its prodigious balance sheet to offer more financial services in the future. Apple reported $378.55 billion in revenue in 2021.
–
apple pay later
Courtesy: Apple Inc.
–
–
–
Apple will run a soft credit check to ensure borrowers are able to repay the loans, which will likely be capped at around $1,000, the company said. If Apple Pay Later loans are not repaid, Apple will no longer extend credit to those users. But the company said it won’t report late payments to credit bureaus.
Apple will initially launch Pay Later in the United States. Apple Card, its other credit name, is currently only available in the US.
–
–
