Apple is making its biggest move into finance by offering loans directly to consumers for its new “buy now, pay later” product, taking on a role played in its other lending services by banking partners such as Goldman Sachs.
Short-term loans made through the iPhone maker’s new Apple Pay Later service, announced on Monday, will be made through a wholly owned subsidiary, Apple Financing LLC, the company said.
Apple Pay Later will be accepted by the millions of US retailers that already take the iPhone’s mobile and online payments service, giving it a broad reach and an enviable customer base who can already afford to splash out on the company’s latest smartphone.
Big tech’s move into the core banking business has been long feared on Wall Street after years of an uneasy alliance in areas such as mobile payments. In the past, Apple has worked with Goldman Sachs to issue a credit card in the US, as well as with banks such as Barclays in the UK, to offer financing for purchases of its own devices.
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However, those banks’ roles are diminished in its latest financial product.
Goldman Sachs is facilitating Apple Pay Later by allowing Apple to access Mastercard’s network, since the iPhone maker lacks a licence to issue payment credentials directly. But Apple is handling the underwriting and lending using its new subsidiary.
In a statement, Goldman Sachs said it was “excited about our partnership with Apple, which will only continue to grow”.
The set-up will allow Apple to earn interchange fees from each transaction as well as give the company more control over data and help accelerate international expansion of its financial products. However, if a customer fails to pay back the loan, Apple must swallow the loss.
Apple has previously rolled out other online services such as Apple Music, iCloud and TV+ to dozens of countries simultaneous with launches in the US or soon after, but its financial services expansion has moved more slowly. Currently, Apple Card is only available in the US.
Though the company declined to disclose its specific financing mechanism, Apple can easily afford to lend off its own balance sheet, especially for short-term loans. It had net cash of $73 billion (€68 billion) at the end of March, according to its most recent quarterly results.
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The “buy now, pay later” service is the latest addition to a growing suite of Apple financial services, all managed through the Wallet app that comes pre-installed on every iPhone.
Apple Pay, which debuted in 2014, allows iPhone and Apple Watch owners to use credit and debit cards by tapping their devices to wireless readers in stores. In 2017, Apple added the ability for users to make peer-to-peer payments through a service now called Apple Cash.
Apple said it did not see a need to apply for a banking licence at this time.
Several tech companies, including Amazon, PayPal, Stripe, Shopify and Block — formerly known as Square — offer financing to small businesses that sell through their platforms. However, few big tech groups beyond specialist fintech companies such Klarna and Affirm have extended loans to consumers for general purchases, as Apple is planning.
Buyers of Apple’s premium-priced gadgets tend to have higher incomes than other tech customers, making them less of a lending risk. Apple can also use customer data, such as how long users have owned an iPhone or how often they buy apps from the App Store, to help determine whether a customer is in good standing.
Apple said its decision to go it alone was in part taken to avoid sharing personal data with third parties. The company will not charge fees for late payments, in line with Klarna and Affirm, but will restrict access to further short-term credit.
In March, Apple bought UK-based fintech Credit Kudos. The start-up uses machine learning to create an alternative to traditional credit scores, which have been criticised as a way to accurately assess a consumer’s finances. — Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022
