Apple is testing a Pay Later feature for employees

Apple is reportedly testing the Pay Later feature for Apple Wallet on its own staff.

The company announced Apple Pay Later at WWDC 2022 in June. This was supposed to be an addition to the Apple Wallet app in iOS 16, but missed the rollout of Apple’s latest mobile OS a few months later due to reports of major technical issues.

Pay Later lets you split payments made with Apple Pay into four interest-free payments over six weeks. It’s essentially Apple’s “buy now, pay later” scheme.

We haven’t heard much about this promising feature since then, but Mark Gurman of Bloomberg now claims that something is moving. The company has already tested Pay Later internally, but has now expanded that testing phase to 80,000 US retail employees.

Just last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said of Apple Pay Later that “it will be launched soon.” Given that this feature is currently being used in part by Apple store employees, this is certainly the case. We can talk about several weeks.

When it arrives, we expect Pay Later to become a US exclusive for a while. This is usually how Apple works with its new services.

Apple Pay itself was announced back in 2014 with the iPhone 6, but international rollout didn’t start until 2015. It has proven to be a major initiator of making payments through your phone, and Apple’s mobile payment ambitions clearly continue.