Apple on Monday unveiled iOS 16 which contains a new Wallet app which adds Apple Pay Later, Order Tracking, and other new features that are poised to disruptthe “Buy Now Pay Later” market.
Apple Pay Later provides users in the US with a seamless and secure way to split the cost of an Apple Pay purchase into four equal payments spread over six weeks, with zero interest and no fees of any kind. Built into Apple Wallet and designed with users’ financial health in mind, Apple Pay Later makes it easy to view, track, and repay Apple Pay Later payments within Wallet. Users can apply for Apple Pay Later when they are checking out with Apple Pay, or in Wallet. Apple Pay Later is available everywhere Apple Pay is accepted online or in-app, using the Mastercard network. Additionally, with Apple Pay Order Tracking, users can receive detailed receipts and order tracking information in Wallet for Apple Pay purchases with participating merchants.
Cromwell Schubarth for Silicon Valley Business Journal:
The stock of one major buy now, pay later player, San Francisco-based Affirm Holdings Inc., dropped 5.5% on the news Monday. But analysts say that could be an overreaction.
“We see Apple’s immense scale as a potential important accelerant for broader industry adoption as we see in-store as a next major leg of industry growth,” analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote.
Buy now, pay later companies like Affirm, Sweden-based Klarna and Australia-based Afterpay Ltd. did an estimated $97 billion in business in 2020. Analysts predict that could grow to as much as $200 billion by 2025.
That’s what prompted PayPal Holdings Inc to launch its own product, Amazon.com Inc. to partner with Affirm and Block Inc. (formerly known as Square) to acquire Afterpay for $29 billion.
Morgan Stanley analyst James Faucette believes that Apple’s Pay Later could draw in a different type of user from what others in the industry do now.
“The demographics of the Apple Pay user base are likely generally higher income and better banked with more credit alternatives than those that have gravitated to BNPL offerings from Affirm and Block’s Afterpay,” he wrote on Monday.
MacDailyNews Take: With zero interest, no fees, and seamless, friction-free, ease of use, Apple Pay Later will indeed disrupt the “Buy Now Pay Later” market.
The world’s best customers will happily and organically use Apple Pay Later, not any of the soon-to-be also-rans who will be relegated to scrounging at the bottom of the barrel for those most likely to default.
See ya, Affirm et al. – wouldn’t want to be ya!
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PayPal Credit 6 months interest free, no fees, if paid in full in 6 months for online purchases that accept it. Just putting this out there.
What the World needs is another option to consume w/ risk of not being able to pay.
Consuming…the highest of all human activities.
Apple Pay Later may also disrupt the payroll lending business, and the many fintech cos. trying to displace that market.
in a properly managed society with democratically elected representatives who cared about people over their corporate funders, there would be strict regulations that would outlaw usury. That is what all those slimy payday loan sharks do. They make the honest poor poorer. Unfortunately that is now too much to ask the corrupt partisan idiots of both parties that sit in congress
And, it’s worth acknowledging that Mr. Woke himself is contradicting his empathy for the “non-privileged” by standing behind and introducing this as a “service.” Amazing sht if you ask me.