It sure looks like disrupting the world of finance isn’t as easy as Apple initially thought.
On Monday, the iPhone maker told 9to5Mac that it was discontinuing its buy now, pay later service, Apple Pay Later, just months after it was rolled out across the US in October.
“Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay,” the company said. “With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the US.”
Last year, reports emerged that Apple wanted to end its partnership with Goldman Sachs. The companies had joined forces to offer an Apple-branded credit card in 2019, followed by a high-yield savings account in 2022.
But growing losses may have prompted Goldman Sachs to rethink its partnership with the tech giant. In January 2023, the bank revealed that it had lost $3 billion from its consumer banking activities since 2020.
Apple is looking to exit from its partnership with Goldman Sachs in the next 12 to 15 months, The Wall Street Journal reported in November, citing people familiar with the matter.
It is unclear if Apple will replace Goldman Sachs with another financial services partner, though the chances of that happening appear slim.
Banking giant Citigroup previously passed on the partnership over profitability concerns, CNBC reported in May 2019, citing people with knowledge of the bank’s negotiations with Apple.
Representatives for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
Disrupting businesses is a tough business
Apple’s travails in the financial services sector underscore the immense challenges it faces when trying to disrupt an established industry.
The Cupertino-based giant has a stunning track record for disruption — whether it be with the music industry with the iPod and iTunes or when it reinvented the phone with the iPhone.
However, Apple’s recent attempts at innovation haven’t hit the same bar.
For one, the company’s attempt at a mixed-reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, was met with muted sales and middling reviews.
And if that wasn’t enough, Apple said in the same month that it was pulling the plug on its electric car project after working on it for nearly a decade, per Bloomberg.
In fact, Apple once had dreams of reinventing the television, with the company’s late founder, Steve Jobs, proclaiming that he’d figured out how to do it.
“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,” Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson. “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”
It’s been over a decade since Jobs’ death, and Apple doesn’t seem anywhere close to realizing his vision, besides their set-top box Apple TV and its fledgling streaming service Apple TV+.
To be sure, disruption is tough, even for a trillion-dollar tech behemoth like Apple. But the company could increase its chances of success by sticking to what it knows best — making great consumer-facing technology.
While some might view Apple as a laggard in AI, the company has managed to charm the markets with its vision of practical and user-centric AI tools.
Now, a lot could still happen down the line, but offering a highly personalized and seamless AI service is right up Apple’s alley.
And for a company whose motto is “Think Different,” relying on its ethos instead of deep pockets might be the key to beating the competition.
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