Apple to Discontinue Apple Pay Later
At 9to5Mac, Chance Miller writes:
Apple has announced that it is no longer offering Apple Pay Later, the “buy now, pay later” service that launched in the United States last year. The change goes into effect starting today, Apple says. Existing users with open Apple Pay Later loans will still be able to manage them via the Wallet app.
Good riddance. Installment loan offerings will still be available from debit and credit cards, but it felt off-brand for Apple to promote a feature often associated with irresponsible spending (see “Apple Unveils Apple Pay Later,” 29 March 2023).
I too felt like this was such an off-brand venture for Apple, especially when Apple Card is so focused on being pro-consumer in terms of bending over backwards to help avoid paying in interest-accruing installments.
I’ve purchased something like eight pieces of Apple equipment using Apple Card interest-free installments. While it depends on having cash in your own bank account to make those monthly payments (it’s not a loan in that sense), it is really, really hard to miss a payment or to pay the incorrect amount or to miss the payment deadline.
Really hard.
Apple Pay Later may have had some of those same features, but I never felt evenly remotely compelled to try it. “Pay Later” did not take long to become a toxic phrase for consumers!
But Apple had to do it, or it would “fall behind” and prove Apple was “no longer irrelevant” and can “no longer innovate”.
The whole thing struck me as silly. Not just Apple’s, every pay later service. I buy $15 worth of groceries and get three different ways to pay later. I suspect all these pay later services are a big failure. If you use these services, there’s absolutely no way to track who you owe money to. Just a bunch of $5 and $11 payments all over the place.
It’s easy to view pay later service as enticing people to buy things they can’t afford but often it is merely helping someone with cashflow issues or just starting out in business to buy equipment they need to do work with.
So I didn’t see it as off-brand, myself.
I continue to vehemently disagree that this was a bad thing. It is extremely disrespectful to poor people to say, "poor people are too stupid/irresponsible to use credit wisely, so they shouldn’t be offered credit!” Payday Lending: Protecting or Harming Consumers? - Reason Foundation
(Apple making business decisions is another matter entirely. That’s up to them.)