Over the past few months, Apple has unveiled a couple of financial services, but none of them have actually launched. Apple Pay Later was announced in June 2022 and was expected to land in September of the same year but was delayed. Similarly, Apple also collaborated with Goldman Sachs to offer savings account for Apple Card customers back in October but that initiative is yet to appear in a tangible form too. Now, it seems that both these projects as well as two others have been delayed further.
Bloomberg"s Mark Gurman has explained that two other fintech projects are currently in development at Apple too. These are a subscription program for iPhone hardware as well as an expansion for the Pay Later program, dubbed Apple Pay Monthly Installments. Both of these projects have reportedly been delayed due to engineering challenges.
Apparently, creating a next-generation financial platform to handle interest calculations, credit checks, and rewards is proving a bit too difficult for Apple. This is being called Project Breakout internally.
Despite setbacks when it comes to meeting deadlines, the projects aren"t at a standstill. In fact, Apple Pay Later was being tested with corporate employees a few weeks ago before being opened up to retail employees in some regions earlier this month. Gurman anticipates the feature to become generally available by March or April, without being tied to a specific iOS release. On the other hand, the release date for Apple saving accounts via the Goldman Sachs partnership remains unclear.
The release of Apple Pay Later is also a dependency for the unannounced Apple Pay Monthly Installments program. This initiative is intended to cater to higher transaction amounts and requires an in-house lending subsidiary. Basically, Apple will have to gauge traction for Apple Pay Later before announcing this expansion.
Finally, the iPhone subscription service was actually expected in 2022 or 2023 but is yet to make an appearance. Its aim is to make it easier for customers to use expensive Apple hardware without paying a large sum upfront.
All in all, while Apple seems to be making headway in most of its fintech initiatives, recent engineering and technical challenges have deterred it from launching them publicly. That said, if the latest report is to be believed, we should be seeing some of these services launch publicly soon.
Source: Bloomberg