Business briefs

By NewsPress Now

Apple kills off its buy now, pay later service barely a year after launch

NEW YORK | Apple is discontinuing its buy now, pay later service known as Apple Pay Later barely a year after its initial launch in the U.S., and will rely on companies who already dominate the industry like Affirm and Klarna.

It’s an acknowledgement from a company known for producing hit products that building a financial services business from scratch as Apple has been doing for several years is difficult and highly competitive.

Apple Pay Later launched with fanfare in March 2023 as a way for iPhone customers to split purchases of up to $1,000 into four equal payments with no fees or interest. The service was Apple’s answer to the growing popularity of buy now, pay later services globally, and considered a sizeable threat to companies like Klarna, Affirm and others.

But Apple Pay Later was only available where Apple Pay was accepted whereas the other buy now, pay later companies had deeply integrated themselves into millions of merchant websites.

In an acknowledgement of how popular buy now, pay later services had become, Apple said at its developer’s conference this month that it would start allowing banks to offer buy now, pay later plans to their customers through Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Affirm would be integrated directly into Apple Wallet, and Apple customers would be able to open an Affirm account directly.

“With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the U.S.,” Apple said late Monday. “Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.”

Apple executives as recently as this month had indicated that the company still had plans for Apple Pay Later despite announcing plans to integrate Affirm directly into Apple Wallet.

Apple Pay Later was unique because Apple needed to create its own bank to offer the loans. The Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs, which means Goldman ultimately decides who gets approved and what spending limits are for each customer.

Apple has discontinued any new Apple Pay Later loans, but customers who have existing Apple Pay Later loans will be able to manage them inside Apple Pay.

California fines Amazon nearly $6M, alleging illegal work quotas

LOS ANGELES | California has fined Amazon a total of $5.9 million, alleging the e-commerce giant worked warehouse employees so hard that it put their safety at risk, officials said Tuesday.

The two citations issued in May by the California Labor Commissioner’s Office said Amazon.com Services LLC ran afoul of the state’s Warehouse Quota Law at facilities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, east of Los Angeles.

The law, which took effect in 2022, “requires warehouse employers to provide employees written notice of any quotas they must follow, including the number of tasks they need to perform per hour and any discipline that could come” from not meeting the requirements, the labor commissioner’s office said in a statement.

Amazon was fined $1.2 million at a warehouse in Redlands and $4.7 million at another in nearby Moreno Valley.

The company said Tuesday that it disagrees with the allegations and has appealed the citations.

“The truth is, we don’t have fixed quotas. At Amazon, individual performance is evaluated over a long period of time, in relation to how the entire site’s team is performing,” company spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said in a statement. “Employees can — and are encouraged to — review their performance whenever they wish. They can always talk to a manager if they’re having trouble finding the information.”

The citations allege that Amazon failed to provide written notice of quotas.

Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said Amazon engaged in “exactly the kind of system” that the quotas law was put in place to prevent.

“Undisclosed quotas expose workers to increased pressure to work faster and can lead to higher injury rates and other violations by forcing workers to skip breaks,” she said in a statement.

The agency began investigating in 2022 after employees at the two Southern California facilities reported that they were subject to unfair quota practices, said the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for improving working conditions.

Similar legislation has been enacted in Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Washington, the resource center said. In May, U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a federal version of the warehouse worker protection act in Congress.

FTC refers complaint about TikTok’s adherence to child privacy law to the DOJ

The Federal Trade Commission has referred a complaint against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, to the Department of Justice.

The FTC said in a statement Tuesday that it investigated the two companies and “uncovered reason to believe” they are “violating or are about to violate” the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law which requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting personal information of children under 13.

The agency also cited potential violations of the FTC Act, the law that outlines its enforcement responsibilities.

A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press in March that the agency was looking into whether TikTok violated a prohibition against “unfair and deceptive” business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data.

TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said the company has been working with the FTC for more than a year to address its concerns and was “disappointed the agency is pursuing litigation instead of continuing to work with us on a reasonable solution.”

“We strongly disagree with the FTC’s allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed,” Haurek said in a statement.

The FTC said its investigation began in connection with a compliance review of a 2019 settlement between the agency and Musical.y, the TikTok predecessor that was acquired by ByteDance in 2017. Under the settlement, Musical.y agreed to pay $5.7 million to resolve allegations that the company violated the children’s privacy law.

The agency said that while it does not typically publicize complaints that are referred to the DOJ, it determined doing so this time was “in the public interest.”

Citing national security concerns, U.S. lawmakers passed a law in April that requires TikTok to be sold to an approved buyer or face a nationwide ban. TikTok and Beijing-based ByteDance have sued to overturn the law, which President Joe Biden signed.

—From AP reports