Apple’s “buy now, pay later” service “Apple Pay Later” has finally entered retail beta testing. The move comes months after the company announced the service at WWDC22.

Apple Pay Later is now available in beta to Apple’s retail store employees. This signals the financing option is nearing its public release.

Pay for your transactions over 4 interest-free installments

Apple is working with its Apple Card partner, Goldman Sachs, on the ‘buy now, pay later’ service. Bloomberg reports that Apple Pay Later will allow you to split a purchase into four installments that must be paid over six weeks. There will be no additional interest or fees for this.

Apple and Goldman Sachs will effectively give you a short-term, interest-free loan for your purchases. The Cupertino giant has over 80,000 retail store employees in the US, giving it a large user base to try out the service before launch.

The two companies are also working on Apple Pay Monthly Installments. This will allow you to split a large transaction over several months, presumably with a marginal interest rate.

PayPal and Affirm Holdings already provide a similar “buy now, pay later” service in the US.

Apple Pay Later could debut with iOS 16.4

Given that the ‘buy now, pay later’ service has entered retail testing, Apple could publicly release it with iOS 16.4. The OS could enter beta testing within the next few days, with the stable build landing sometime in March or April 2023.

Apple Pay Later will be a part of the Wallet app on the iPhone. Initially, the feature was slated to launch with iOS 16 in September 2022. But due to technical and engineering issues, the company had to delay the rollout.

Apple has set up Apple Financing LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary for Apple Pay Later. This also allows the company to expand the service with more options in the future.