👉 Background: Apple launched its Apple Pay feature in iPhones back in October 2014. In 2016, ANZ became the first Australian bank to let its customers make card payments from iPhones.

👉 What happened: Now, ANZ has partnered with Apple to allow iPhone users to access buy-now, pay-later style loans via Apple Pay. This will allow customers to split the payment into 3, 6 or 12 months instalments for a fee.

👉 What else: Apple has also said its willing to open up Apple Pay to Afterpay, Zip and other banks. But many of the other big banks, like CommBank, are reluctant because it allows Apple to grow their power in the financial services space even more.

What's the key learning?

💡Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Apple often partners with companies when they lack a specific capability. But once they develop their own solution or have enough market share, they tighten their grip on that market.

💡Apple has done this on a number of occasions in the past (and even today)

• It partnered with Google for Google Maps to be the default mapping app for the iPhone in 2012 - but then built its own
• It recently partnered with Open AI to enhance Siri - but is also planning to build its own AI capability down the track.

💡Apple has done the same in financial services across the world. Right now, it has significant market share in Australia and has tightened its grip. Apple's tap and go represents 80 per cent share of all digital wallet payments and it generates more than $130 million in annual fees in Australia - so you can understand why banks are a little uneasy to partner with them.