Apple Pay Later could finally appear in March or April, bringing a new way to pay for Cupertino's somewhat pricey products.
That's according to serial APple tipster Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, which noted that several other in-progress financial services such as the Apple Card savings account are still some way from launch.
Apple Pay Later was announced during the launch of iOS 16 last summer and was meant to arrive in September 2022, but has yet to do so beyond limited tests among Apple's own employees. But since Apple's got its own corporate and retail staff to try out the system, Gurman believes we're just a couple of months off a full release for Pay Later.
Similarly, the Apple Card savings account was announced back in October, and would let Apple Card users keep their Daily Cash rebates in a high-yield savings account to grow their savings further. At the time of writing though, it's not gone live to any Apple Card user.
There's more Apple is working on but yet to release in this area too. According to Gurman, we expect an Apple Pay Monthly Installments option that works similarly to Pay Later, except with larger amounts of money and interest payments. Plus, Gurman repeats previous rumors of an incoming iPhone hardware subscription program that would allow you to pay a reduced rate on your new phone by effectively renting it from Apple.
The subscription was hoped to be ready for the iPhone 14 launch last September. Apple missed this due to "engineering and technical setbacks." But the service is still being worked on, says Gurman, with the view to launch it this year, perhaps in time for the iPhone 15.
Some of these delays, Gurman claims, are from the fact that Apple wants to bring these services further under its control with a new finance system apparently called Project Breakout. Apple currently partners with other banks and finance companies, such as Goldman Sachs, to run these services, but in true Apple style, it wants to have as much as possible run in-house.
We're expecting iOS 16.4 to arrive within a month or so, which may bring with it some of these under-development services. Gurman does add that Apple can introduce Pay Later as an over-the-air (OTA) update though. So perhaps Apple will instead bring it to the currently available iOS 16.3 software whenever it feels Pay Later's ready for the public.
