San Francisco, Jun 9 (IANS): Tech giant Apple has joined the 'buy now, pay later' service with the new Apple Pay Later, which was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2022.

According to CNBC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple will check user credit and extend short-term loans to the users for Apple Pay Later.

The new loan service, which will compete against similar offerings from Affirm and PayPal, was announced this week.

Later this year, when the company's new iOS 16 iPhone software is released, users will be able to buy products with Apple Pay and pay the balance in four equal parts over six weeks as a 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) service, the report said.

The tech giant has partnered with Mastercard, which interacts with the vendors and offers a white label BNPL product called Installments, which Apple is using.

Apple Card issuer Goldman Sachs also is involved as the technical issuer of the loans and is the official BIN sponsor, as per the report.

But Apple is not using Goldman's credit decisions or its balance sheet for issuing the loans, it added.

The tech giant will initially launch Pay Later in the US. Apple Card, its other credit name, is currently only available in the US.