While Apple Apple Pay Later was announced back at WWDC 2022, the “buy now, pay later” feature is still not available to the public. That could change soon, however, as a report shows that Apple has expanded the feature’s “internal testing” to thousands of its retail employees, suggesting that the feature is finally being rolled out to the public.
Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned the upcoming launch of Apple Pay Later last week during the company’s earnings release when Cook said the feature was being tested among certain Apple employees. Today’s report from Bloomberg indicates that the test has been significantly expanded.
According to the report, Apple reached out to its retail employees this week to offer them a beta version of the service ahead of its public launch. “Apple has about 270 stores in the U.S. and more than 80,000 employees nationwide, allowing the company to quickly test the feature among a large number of employees,” Bloomberg explained.
Apple Pay Later is a new financial service from Apple that allows U.S. iPhone and Mac users to split payments into four installments over a six-week period without paying additional interest or fees.
Today’s Bloomberg report also includes another tidbit of information about Apple’s ambitions in the “buy now, pay later” space. According to the report, Apple is also developing a version of Apple Pay Later called “Apple Pay Monthly Installments.
As the name implies, this will allow users to split larger purchases into equal payments over a longer period of time. Unlike the short-term Apple Pay Later installments, however, this payment plan will incur interest charges.
