‘Apple Pay Later’ Now Being Tested by Apple Store Employees Ahead of Launch

Apple this week made a beta version of its upcoming “Apple Pay Later” feature available to the company’s more than 80,000 retail employees in the U.S. for testing, according to a report today from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman.

Announced at WWDC 2022 last June, Apple Pay Later is a “buy now, pay later” financing option that will let qualifying customers in the U.S. split a purchase made with Apple Pay into four equal payments over six weeks, with no interest or fees to pay. The feature will be built into Apple’s Wallet app on the iPhone and iPad.

Apple Pay Later was already in testing with Apple’s corporate employees, the report states.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that Apple Pay Later would be launching “soon.” Gurman previously claimed that the feature could be made available to the public with iOS 16.4, which will likely enter beta testing by next week. Apple’s website indicates that Apple Pay Later may not be available in all U.S. states at launch.

In 2019, the Apple Card was similarly made available to Apple’s retail employees for testing, around two months before the credit card launched.

The report indicates that Apple has also been developing a separate financing feature called “Apple Pay Monthly Installments” in partnership with Goldman Sachs. This service would allow customers to split up the cost of larger transactions over several months, with interest applied. Apple has yet to publicly announce this feature.