Apple says support for redeeming rewards with more partners is coming to Apple Pay
On Thursday, Apple celebrated 10 years with Apple Pay and announced how the service will evolve in the future, including features like redeeming rewards and expanding installment loan options. In addition to Apple Pay’s newly added support for loan options from Affirm in the U.S., and Monzo Flex in the U.K., the iPhone maker shared that starting today, support for Klarna will go live in the two countries including both at checkout online and in-app with Apple Pay.
Further down the road, the company says it will expand access to installment loan options to include those from eligible credit or debit cards, including those from Citi and Synchrony in the U.S. and other participating issuers with Fiserv. Outside the U.S., these options will also include ANZ in Australia, DBS in Singapore, CaixaBank in Spain, and, in the U.K., HSBC, NewDay, and Zilch — some of which had been announced previously.
Klarna will be rolled out to Canada at some point in the future, as well, the company said.
These installment loan options follow Apple’s surprising decision to roll back its plans for Apple Pay Later, its own “buy now, pay later” service. In June, Apple said it was killing the option that had first launched in late March 2023. Instead, Apple said it would work in partnerships with Apple Pay-enabled banks and lenders to offer this service. The decision allows Apple to ensure banking partners stay connected with Apple Pay, as it becomes a new source for installment loans, instead of seeing Apple compete with them directly.
In an announcement on Apple’s newsroom, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, suggested that the addition of loan providers was only the start of further changes for Apple’s payment service and Wallet. She noted the company would give consumers “the option to redeem rewards,” which Apple Pay-enabled issuers and lenders could use to better connect with their customers. The company took a step in this direction with the launch of iOS 18 and eligible Discover credit cards, but Apple tells us it has more partners on the way.
More broadly, she said the company’s larger goal with Apple Wallet is to replace users’ physical wallets entirely, something it’s been working on with the app’s support for things like event tickets, transit cards, keys, and government IDs. However, the adoption of digital IDs today varies by state, with California, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, and Ohio now supporting digital driver’s licenses and state IDs, while others only have support on the roadmap, or not at all.
Apple also shared some stats about Apple Pay’s adoption after its 10-year history, noting it’s now used by hundreds of millions of consumers across 78 markets, on millions of websites and apps, and in tens of millions of stores worldwide. More than 11,000 bank and network partners support the payment technology, too.
This information is sourced from Sarah Perez via Techcrunch.