While the feature is just as easy to use as Apple Pay, behind the scenes, Apple checks everything it can ascertain about your financial history:
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How many Apple devices you own
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Whether you’ve applied for the Apple Card
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Other cards you use for Apple Pay
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Your spending habits in Apple Stores
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App Store purchases and subscriptions
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Apple Cash payments to friends and family
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Your transactions using Apple Pay
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Financial history with your Apple Card
In certain cases, Apple may even ask for:
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A picture of your ID
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Your entire social security number
Isn’t this basically what every credit card company does? Obviously they want to assess the customer and weed out the ones that might not make payments on time, etc.
Either way, all of this is extremely weird to me as a non-American. If you need to take out a mini loan to buy something you don’t need, just don’t buy it. It’s not worth it.
Obviously there are always exceptions to this “rule”, but I doubt that the majority of people who will use this feature will be as conscious and deliberate about their spending as someone who only has a debit card and avoids “pay later” services.
Edit: Reddit markdown is hard