Apple Pay Later reportedly has entered beta testing among Apple’s retail store employees, signaling that the “buy now, pay later” service is nearing public release.
The move comes months after Apple announced the financing option at its Worldwide Developers Conference last June.
Pay for your transactions over 4 interest-free installments
Apple is working with its Apple Card partner, Goldman Sachs, on the service. Apple Pay Later will allow customers to split a purchase into four installments that must be paid over six weeks, Bloomberg reports. There will be no additional interest or fees for this.
Apple and Goldman Sachs will effectively give you a short-term, interest-free loan for your purchases. Cupertino has more than 80,000 retail store employees in the United States, giving it a large user base to try out the service before launch.
The two companies are also working on Apple Pay Monthly Installments. This will allow you to split a large transaction over several months, presumably with a marginal interest rate.
PayPal and Affirm Holdings already provide a similar “buy now, pay later” service in the United States.
Apple Pay Later could debut with iOS 16.4
Given that the buy now, pay later service has entered retail testing, Apple could publicly release it with iOS 16.4. The OS could enter beta testing within the next few days, with the stable build landing sometime in March or April 2023.
Or it could come even sooner. “For those wondering, Apple Pay Later is activated server side,” Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said Wednesday on Twitter. “So that means it’s not necessarily tied to iOS 16.4. It could launch before a new OS is available.”
Apple Pay Later will be a part of the Wallet app on the iPhone. Initially, the feature was slated to launch with iOS 16 in September 2022. But technical and engineering problems forced the company to delay the rollout.
Apple set up wholly owned subsidiary Apple Financing LLC for Apple Pay Later. This allows the company to expand the service with more options in the future.
Note: We originally published this post at 11:23 p.m. on February 7, 2023. We updated it to include more information about the possible timing of the Apple Pay Later release.
