You’ll Soon Be Able to Use Your Apple Card to Finance a Mac, iPad, or Even AirPods Interest-Free

If you’re an Apple Card holder, you may soon be able to use it to finance just about any Apple product with zero percent interest, including not only iPads and Macs, but also accessories like the Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard, AirPods, Apple TV, HomePod or even Apple’s Pro XDR Display.

Although Apple introduced Apple Card financing for Christmas last year, up until now it’s been limited solely to iPhone purchases, providing interest-free payments over a 24-month installment plan. During Apple’s quarterly earnings call last month Tim Cook hinted at an expansion of the program when asked, saying that the company has been working on a payment plan for other products and that something would be coming soon, although he didn’t offer any additional insight into what products would be included.

It looks like the arrival of the program may be imminent, however, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman offering some additional details on what will be included and exactly how it’s going to work.

Most Apple Products will Qualify

While the original financing program was exclusive to the iPhone, it looks like Apple won’t be expanding it in baby steps, and actually plans to include almost its entire product lineup, although the terms will be slightly different across each category, and it doesn’t look like any of them will be as generous as the iPhone plan.

While iPhone customers can still get 24-month financing, the rest of Apple’s family of products will cap out at 12 months, according to Gurman, including iPads, Macs, the Apple Pencil, iPad keyboards, and the Pro XDR Display. However, certain other products, including AirPods, Apple TV, and the HomePod, will only be eligible for six months of financing, according to sources familiar with the plan.

It’s sort of unclear why this distinction exists, since it’s clearly not solely based on purchase price; the Apple Pencil is considerably less expensive than the AirPods, Apple TV, or HomePod, and yet it’s eligible for 12-month financing. However, we suspect this may only be if it’s bought alongside an iPad, allowing a customer to purchase an entire iPad kit and have it financed together, as it doesn’t seem likely that Apple wants to encourage users to finance a $100 Apple Pencil over 12 months. The same will also probably hold true for the Magic Keyboard and Smart Keyboard folio.

Apple and its partner Goldman Sachs hope that the new program will encourage more people to sign up for the Apple Card as well as boosting sales of Apple products, and education customers will also be able to take advantage of the financing plan at the normal discounted prices.

How It Will Work

The program will function similarly to the iPhone financing plan, just for a shorter period of time. Payments will be managed through the Apple Card section in the Wallet app on the iPhone, and charges will be automatically added to the customer’s monthly Apple Card bill.

Notably, this is not open-ended financing where Apple Card customers will simply be given six or 12 months to pay off the outstanding balance; Apple will expect regular monthly instalments to be made on top of the normal Apple Card minimum payments.

It also seems likely that this will be limited to online purchases made from the iPhone Wallet app, as was the case with the iPhone financing plan, so users will have to order their products shipped to them or use the in-store pickup option, although it’s conceivably possible that you could walk into an Apple Store and still initiate the purchase from your iPhone in the same way as you would order a product for in-store pickup, but without the additional product staging delay.

While Apple has yet to formally announce the new program, and has naturally declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, it seems likely that the company is merely ironing out the final details with Goldman and it could be announced any day now.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]