Apple takes another step towards becoming a bank 🍏🏦 American Express & Microsoft want to disrupt business travel expense reporting with AI 🤖; Visa-powered Super App for Africa’s Farmers 👨‍🌾

FinTech is Eating the World, 16 February

Hey Everyone,

Happy Thursday! Today’s issue is really hot as we’re looking at Apple that takes another step towards becoming a bank (how they are building the future of underwriting + Apple Bank strategy), American Express & Microsoft who want to disrupt business travel expense reporting with AI (& why it’s a bigger win for AmEx), and Visa-powered Super App for Africa’s Farmers (which is yet another proof that Africa is the Next BIG Thing). Let’s jump straight into the cool stuff 🌶

Apple takes another step towards becoming a bank 🍏🏦

The news 🗞 Last week, I talked about Apple Pay Later and why it can be huge. Now, it’s getting even more interesting as Apple AAPL 0.00%↑ is laying out rules for how it will approve transactions. The key thing here is whether you’ve been a good customer in the past. 

Let’s take a closer look at this.

More on this 👉 As you remember, the Pay Later service is already running behind schedule - it was originally expected last year but it had to be delayed since the company has been facing significant technical and engineering challenges.

According to Bloomberg, Pay Later is currently being tested with Apple employees, which revealed that Apple will evaluate borrowers based on their spending history and even which of the company’s devices they own. The program also will look at whether customers have applied for an Apple Card credit card and the other cards they have linked to their Apple Pay accounts.

What does this mean? 🤔 Using spending behavior for underwriting credit will become a new default, and Apple has everything to make it huge. Here’s how: