Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Moving into financial services has been one of Apple's biggest growth opportunities, but it is also one of the most challenging areas: the company's new projects in the financial sector face engineering and technical challenges, forcing it to slow down. unable to deliver in time.

In the past eight months, the tech giant has announced at least two new features: a buy-and-pay service and a savings account tied to the wallet app. The former, called Apple Pay Later, was announced in June last year and was originally scheduled to be released in September last year. The latter was announced in October last year and was scheduled to be officially launched in a few weeks' time.

In addition, there are two financial projects that have not yet been officially announced. One is the iPhone hardware subscription, and the other is an extension of the Pay Later project called "Apple Pay monthly installments"-the latter can handle larger, longer installments, but charge a certain amount of interest.

Apple continues to promote these services, but it is clear that financial services are more difficult to develop than they expected. Industry insiders believe that the delays in these four projects are mainly due to engineering challenges and the support systems needed by the next-generation financial system.

Creating this underlying platform is one of the most ambitious parts of Apple's financial program. It was previously reported that Apple had deployed a project called "Project Breakout" to develop its own technology to handle interest calculations, rewards, credit checks, approvals and transaction history-all of which are currently the responsibility of partners.

But recently there have been some dawns. After months of delays, the company is preparing to release the first version of Apple Pay Later to consumers. A few weeks ago, they allowed employees to test the feature, and began testing it for retail employees earlier this month. According to this calculation, Apple has tens of thousands of testers.

In a memo sent to retail employees, Apple said employees participating in the Beta test were not allowed to take screenshots or confirm the existence of the feature. Not only that, you may not even discuss the matter with any internal or external person. The company said: "participating in the testing of this function must abide by the confidentiality agreement agreed to when signing the employment agreement with Apple."

Apple adopted a similar testing process for the Apple Card in 2019, testing retail employees a month before its official release.

Pay Later tests do not cover Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin. It is reported that the unionized Towson Apple flagship store in Maryland did not qualify for the test. The company stopped handing out the latest benefits to the store's employees last year, sparking discontent.

Apple also informed retail employees that when making Pay Later loans, they need to undergo soft credit checks that do not affect their credit scores, the same as other "buy and pay" services.

Considering that retail Beta testing just started last week, the feature is expected to be officially released in March or April. The service is not bundled with launches such as iOS 16.4, but is available directly through upgrades to the iOS 16.3 system.

Industry insiders believe that Apple hopes to use tests to observe the performance of the Pay later before it will be made available to more people to meet the larger transaction volume. The service will be provided through an internal lending subsidiary.

There is also a savings account. When Apple announced the feature last October, they said the service would be launched "in the coming months".

At the time, everything seemed to be going well: Apple quickly added the underlying code to support the feature in iOS 16.1, and partnered with Goldman Sachs to release a detailed description of the service in December. But since then, Apple and Goldman Sachs have kept quiet about it.

As for the iPhone subscription service, it was originally planned to be launched in 2022 or 2023. Industry insiders had expected the service to be released along with last year's iPhone 14, but it didn't appear in the end. But Apple may still be developing the service, which is of great significance to Apple as long as it makes it easier for users to use the increasingly expensive iPhone.

Progress on the last important jigsaw puzzle of Apple's financial strategy has been unusually slow: the international expansion of Apple Card. The credit card was launched in March 2019, but three years later, it can still only be used in the United States.

Fortunately, progress in other areas is going well. Apple's digital driver's license has been launched, albeit at a slow pace. Apple Pay has also been launched in many international markets (South Korea will soon be able to use the service). Apple has also recently increased its support for sensor payments for small businesses.

It's not hard to see that Apple still wants to play a bigger role in consumers' financial lives, but it may take a long time to achieve that ambitious goal.

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