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Apple is getting into the buy now, pay later space with a few tweaks to the existing model including no option to pay with a credit card. The company will roll out the product to some consumers this spring, and will begin reporting the loans to credit bureaus in the fall. Here's what you need to know. Since the start of the pandemic, the option to buy now, pay later has skyrocketed in popularity, especially among young and low-income consumers who may not have ready access to traditional credit. If you shop online for clothes or furniture, sneakers or concert tickets, you've seen the option at checkout to break the cost into smaller installments over time. Companies like Afterpay, Affirm, Klarna, and Paypal already offer the service, typically with late fees for missed payments and the option to use a credit card or bank account to make installment payments. Apple's version, which is integrated with Apple Pay and facilitated by MasterCard, will require the consumer use a debit car
American Express saw its fourth-quarter profits fall by 9 per cent, as the credit card giant had to set aside significantly more money to cover potentially bad loans. The company saw charge offs and delinquencies rise, a troubling sign for a company whose customer base is usually well-to-do and extremely creditworthy. But the company did announce it planned to raise its quarterly dividend and also forecast higher-than-expected profits for 2023, which helped lift the stock in early trading as investors seemed to look past the delinquencies and more at how cardmembers were still strongly spending on their accounts. The New York-based company said it earned a profit of USD 1.57 billion in the quarter, or USD 2.07 a share, that is down from USD 1.72 billion, or USD 2.18 a share, in the same period a year earlier. That is below what analysts had forecasted. While AmEx saw a double digit rise in card usage from a year ago cardmembers spent USD 413.3 billion on their cards last quarter