With Apple moving into the lending business with a “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) service, Apple Pay Later, the company will of course apply rules for how it will approve BNPL transactions. One key factor, naturally, will be the quality of your credit history.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The Apple Pay Later service — announced last year but still in the testing phase — will evaluate borrowers based on their spending history and even which of the company’s devices they own. The program, which lets shoppers make purchases and then pay over installments, also will look at whether customers have applied for an Apple Card credit card and the other cards they have linked to their Apple Pay accounts.
The lending criteria were revealed as part of a test of the service with Apple employees, who can now use the option for their own personal purchases. The evaluations determine whether the company is willing to lend money to applicants and how big an amount it will approve. Many testers are seeing loan approvals for $1,000 and under.
Apple Pay Later loan offers expire after 30 days and applications will sometimes require a copy of a government identification card, full social security number and two-step verification on an Apple account, according to the notes in the test version of the service. Loan status with Apple Pay Later won’t affect access to other company services.
The new service will let Apple leverage its trove of data on customers, including their spending at company retail outlets, App Store transactions and services like Apple Cash peer-to-peer payments.
MacDailyNews Take: Shockingly, before lending money, Apple wants to do what they can to ensure they’ll get paid back.
A little birdie told us that Tim Cook and the rest of Apple’s C-Suite testers each were approved for loans larger than $1,000.
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