Apple expands testing of ‘buy-now-pay-later’ service to retail employees

Apple has expanded an internal test of its upcoming “buy-now-pay-later” (BNPL) service to the company’s thousands of retail employees, a sign the long-awaited feature is finally nearing a public release.

The tech giant contacted retail staffers this week to offer them a test version of the service, according to its workers who asked not to be identified.

Apple Pay Later

The offering, called Apple Pay Later, lets shoppers split the payment for purchases into installments. The company previously rolled out a test for corporate employees.

The offering will vault it into a fast-growing financial market, but it’s already faced several setbacks.

The service was first announced last June and was planned to be released last September as part of iOS 16. Instead, it was delayed until 2023 after technical challenges, Bloomberg previously reported.

The service will run on a new financial platform that the company designed for in-house initiatives. It has used a similar rollout strategy with past financial products.

In 2019, it introduced the Apple Card credit card to retail staff about a month before a public debut. An official spokeswoman from the company declined to comment.

The first version of the new service will allow consumers to split a purchase made through Apple Pay into four installments paid over six weeks — without interest or fees.

The company also has been developing a version of the service called Apple Pay Monthly Installments, working with Goldman Sachs Group, that will split up the cost of large transactions over several months with interest. That offering hasn’t been announced yet.

To launch Apple Pay Later, the iPhone maker set up a wholly owned subsidiary called Apple Financing. That allows the Cupertino, California-based company to handle lending itself, sidestepping partners.

The brand has about 270 stores in the US and more than 80,000 employees across the country, letting the company quickly test the feature with a large population.

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