Apple’s buy now, pay later system is finally available to all customers in the US after its soft launch back in March. To pay later and begin making equal payments over the course of six weeks, you must be set up on Apple Pay with an eligible debit card.

There is a limit, though. Pay Later only works for purchases that cost between $75 and $1,000 made on iPhone or iPad through a vendor that accepts Apple Pay. The company says during the repayment period you won’t accumulate interest and there are no late fees. However, in the fineprint, Apple says your bank could charge you extra fees “if your debit card account contains insufficient funds to make loan repayments.” After opting to finance a purchase during checkout, your Pay Later loan and payment history gets shared with credit bureaus.

In a video tutorial, Apple breaks down how to start. Simply choose between paying in full through Apple Pay or paying later. If you choose the latter, the tool will automatically tell you how much each payment will cost every two weeks, which is subject to approval. You need to confirm your personal information and ‘Agree & Apply’ before beginning a repayment program.

Apple

Once you start making payments, Apple makes it easy to track your progress. Your total remaining balance, upcoming and previous payments are all laid out through the Wallet app. Here, you can set up autopay and change the bank or debit card you're sourcing your payments from and if you’d like to, tap to pay early. Apple also integrated the calendar tool with the Pay Later feature so that an iPhone user can see everything they owe in a single place to keep tabs on progress.

The introduction of Pay Later puts Apple in competition with other digital repayment apps like Afterpay, Klarna and Affirm, which partnered with big tech giants like Amazon to expand their services. Roughly three in four US iPhone users have activated Apple Pay, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The popularity of the company's tap-to-pay tool among iPhone users could help it gain a foothold in this new market.

Snapchat grew to more than 400 million users, Snap announced in its third-quarter earnings report. The app added nine million new users in the last quarter, bringing its total daily active users (DAUs) to 406 million, an increase of 12 percent from last year, the company said.

The milestone comes a little more than a year after Snap laid off about 20 percent of its workforce in an effort to cut costs as advertising revenue slowed. Those cuts, along with new product features, are apparently starting to pay off.

The company reported $1.19 billion in revenue for the quarter, an increase of 5 percent from last year and better than Wall Street analysts expected, according to CNBC. In a statement, Snap pointed to its subscription service, Snapchat+, as a key part of its strategy to grow its non-advertising sources of revenue. Snap announced last month that Snapchat+, which offers users exclusive and experimental features for $4 a month, had reached five million subscribers.

Generative AI has also been a bright spot for the company. The company’s MyAI chatbot, which rolled out to all Snapchat users in April, has reached more than 200 million people who have collectively exchanged more than 20 billion messages with the OpenAI-powered chatbot. Snap said it believes the assistant is one of the “most used AI chatbots available today.”

Developing...

GM announced on Tuesday that it’s delaying production of the Equinox EV, Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV. Electrek reported on the comments from the automaker’s earnings call, citing a desire to “protect” GM’s pricing while adjusting to shifting EV demand. The company didn’t commit to a specific timeline to resume production, only saying the delay would last “a few months.”

“We are also moderating the acceleration of EV production in North America to protect our pricing, adjust to slower near-term growth in demand, and implement engineering efficiency and other improvements that will make our vehicles less expensive to produce, and more profitable,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday.

Barra said the changes “will make our vehicles less expensive to produce, and more profitable” in the long run. She warned that the EV delays would affect Ultium-based models, including the Equinox EV, Silverado EV RST and GMC Sierra EV.

The move comes a week after GM announced it would delay EV truck production (Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV) at its Orion assembly plant in Michigan until late 2025. GM spokesperson Kevin Kelley said the move was designed to “better manage capital investment while aligning with evolving EV demand.”

The United Auto Workers strike began in September and is the elephant in the room amid GM’s production shakeup. Citing uncertain labor costs related to the strike, the automaker also withdrew its full-year financial guidance. It expects to provide more clarity for investors once new union contracts are signed. “Accepting unsustainably high [labor] costs would put our future and GM team member jobs at risk, and jeopardizing our future is something I will not do,” Barra said.

Gemini Trust Company, a cryptocurrency exchange helmed by the infamous Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, just got hit with a lawsuit alleging that it defrauded investors. The suit was brought forth by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the same AG currently prosecuting former president Donald Trump on sweeping charges of fraud.

This isn’t solely directed at Gemini, as cryptocurrency firms Digital Currency Group (DGC) and Genesis Global Capital are also named in the suit. All told, the civil lawsuit alleges that the three companies collectively defrauded 230,000 investors to the tune of more than $1 billion, as reported by Axios. The AG also charged former Genesis CEO Soichiro "Michael" Moro and DCG founder and chief Barry Silbert for trying to conceal the true financial condition of its lending unit.

As for the Winklevoss twins and Gemini, the suit alleges that the digital asset platform didn’t properly disclose the financials of Genesis before partnering with the crypto exchange to form an investment platform called Gemini Earn in 2021. The suit alleges that Gemini announced that Genesis was a “trusted company” despite internal risk analyses to the contrary.

It goes on to allege that in February 2022, Gemini revised its estimate of Genesis’ credit rating, lowering it from the investment-grade BBB to the junk-grade CCC, all without publicly revealing this change to investors and continuing to advertise correlated investments as “low-risk.” Additionally, it’s been alleged that many of the company’s risk assessors took their own money out of Gemini Earn without informing investors.

There are even allegations that more than 60 percent of Genesis’ financials were tied to Sam Bankman-Fried’s disgraced hedge fund Alameda Research. To that end, the connection between Gemini and Genesis is eerily similar to the ties between FTX and Alameda Research, and we all know what happened there.

Gemini took to the preferred social media platform for crypto-enthusiasts, X/Twitter, to refute the allegations, writing that it was simply the victim of fraud on the part of Genesis and DCG. It’s notable the firm didn’t comment on what they knew about Genesis’s poor financial condition and when they knew it, placing the onus of blame on Genesis CEO Moro and DCG founder Silbert.

“Blaming a victim for being defrauded and lied to makes no sense and we look forward to defending ourselves against this inconsistent position,” Gemini wrote.

For his part, DCG founder Barry Silbert penned a statement that completely refuted his side of the allegations, writing that he is “shocked by the baseless allegations in the Attorney General’s complaint” going on to say that he intends to “fight these claims in court.” Cameron Winklevoss hasn’t issued his own statement, but did retweet Gemini’s post on the matter.

Genesis ceased all cryptocurrency trading last month, as reported by CoinDesk, after filing for bankruptcy protection back in January. Today’s lawsuit seeks to recoup the $1 billion in losses and hopes to ban all three companies from the financial industry in New York.

Netflix announced price hikes on two of its plans today. As the company relayed its quarterly earnings, tit said it’s increasing rates for its Basic and Premium plans. The Basic plan, which Netflix killed earlier this year, moves from $10 to $12 for grandfathered customers, while Premium rises from $20 to $23.

Netflix said its ad-supported and Standard plans will remain the same at $7 and $15.49, respectively. Before Wednesday’s news, the company last raised prices in early 2022.

“While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same — a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix wrote in its earnings report. “Our starting price is extremely competitive with other streamers and at $6.99 per month in the US, for example, it’s much less than the average price of a single movie ticket.”

The company’s move to limit password sharing appears to have paid off. Paid memberships are up to 247.15 million, a significant 10 percent annual increase. Paid net subscriber additions were 8.76 million for Q3, the biggest increase of the last year. In addition, Netflix’s advertising-supported plan seems to be off to the hot start it expected as it accounted for 30 percent of all new sign-ups in countries where it’s available.

Netflix has shifted its strategy as it adjusts from its peak-pandemic highs while facing increased competition. In addition to its price hikes, ad-supported plan and password-sharing crackdowns, the streaming service is even taking the peculiar step of moving into retail.

Netflix is hardly alone in raising prices. Disney+, Hulu and Max have all issued increases in the past 12 months. That isn’t limited to direct rivals: Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, Spotify, YouTube Premium and Apple Music all jacked up their subscription costs in the last year.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Netflix announced price hikes on two of its plans today. As the company relayed its quarterly earnings, tit said it’s increasing rates for its Basic and Premium plans. The Basic plan, which Netflix killed earlier this year, moves from $10 to $12 for grandfathered customers, while Premium rises from $20 to $23.

Netflix said its ad-supported and Standard plans will remain the same at $7 and $15.49, respectively.

“While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same — a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix wrote in its earnings report. “Our starting price is extremely competitive with other streamers and at $6.99 per month in the US, for example, it’s much less than the average price of a single movie ticket.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

It looks like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) truly was working on a free TurboTax alternative like earlier reports had claimed. The US tax authority has announced that it will start pilot testing its new Direct File program for the 2024 filing season, though it will initially be available for select taxpayers in 13 states only. During its pilot period, Direct File will only cover individual federal tax returns and won't have the capability to prepare people's state returns. That's why 9 out of the 13 states testing it — namely Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — don't levy state income taxes. 

Arizona, California, Massachusetts and New York, the other four states in the list, worked with the IRS to integrate their state taxes into the Direct File system for 2024. The IRS says it invited all states to join the pilot program, but not all of them were in a position to participate "at this time." In addition to being only available in certain locations, Direct File will only be accessible by people with "relatively simple returns" at the beginning. It will cover W-2 wages and tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, for instance, but it will not cover self-employment income and itemized deductions. However, the agency is still finalizing the tax scope for the pilot, so it could still change over the coming months. 

Based on the screenshots the IRS shared with The Washington Post, taxpayers will only have to answer a questionnaire to be able to file their taxes directly, simplifying the process without having to pay for a third-party service. An IRS official told the publication that select eligible taxpayers in the aforementioned states will start getting invitations to use the service sometime around mid-February next year. The agency says it will begin with a small group of taxpayers before expanding access to more and more people as the filing season for the 2023 federal tax return progresses.

"This is a critical step forward for this innovative effort that will test the feasibility of providing taxpayers a new option to file their returns for free directly with the IRS," IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement. "In this limited pilot for 2024, we'll be working closely with the states that have agreed to participate in an important test run of the state integration. This will help us gather important information about the future direction of the Direct File program."

The IRS is hoping to gather data and feedback during the pilot to be able to analyze how effective Direct File is. It's also hoping to identify areas of improvement for a "potential large-scale launch in the future."

Goldman Sachs, Apple's banking partner for its credit card and high-yield savings account, is seemingly having doubts about those products. According to The Wall Street Journal, Goldman is looking to get out of the consumer lending business, which could have implications for Apple Card and the associated savings account.

The report suggests that several senior Goldman executives want the company to ditch its remaining consumer lending products — those it offers with Apple as well as the General Motors credit card. No final decision is said to have been made, though the future of Goldman's consumer products may become a little clearer when the finance company reports its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

Consumer lending efforts such as Apple Card may have been a mistake for Goldman. The business unit that oversees those and GreenSky (a "buy now, pay later" company Goldman bought for around $2.2 billion last year and is selling at a loss) has lost billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Goldman has run afoul of regulators. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has investigated Goldman's handling of credit card billing errors and refunds. Unlike with other card programs, Apple Card bills go out at the beginning of each month. That's said to put more pressure on Goldman customer service workers who deal with complaints and billing issues. Issuing bills on a rolling basis may alleviate that strain. However, Goldman has reportedly been unsuccessful in convincing Apple to move to a more typical billing cycle.

If Goldman isn't able to reduce expenses for its credit cards, it may try to sell the Apple and GM partnerships, according to the report. That may prove a difficult prospect, given that customers have deposited billions of dollars into Apple savings accounts. If Goldman manages to get another bank to take over the Apple partnership (including those hefty savings accounts), the Journal noted that the finance company may have to raise expensive emergency funding to cover any shortfall.

Goldman is said to have had talks with American Express about taking over its consumer products. However, Amex reportedly has concerns regarding the Apple Card’s loss rates and other factors Goldman has been attempting to remedy. Amex leaders are also said to have bristled at the fact the Apple Card operates on the Mastercard network.

The biggest acquisition in gaming history and one of the largest in the tech industry is in the books. Twenty months after the deal was announced, Microsoft has bought Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the largest acquisition in the company's history. CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer has asked Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to stay on until the end of 2023, at which point he'll be leaving the company. It's been a long road filled with plenty of twists and turns to get to this point.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) initially blocked the deal in April, though it and the companies agreed to pause Microsoft's appeal to try and resolve the regulator's reservations over the merger's impact on the cloud gaming industry. An appeal tribunal approved a request to delay the proceedings. 

In an attempt to win over the UK regulator, Microsoft agreed to sell the cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft. That means that not only should Activision Blizzard's games be on Xbox Game Pass, but they'll land on Ubisoft+ and any other game-streaming service Ubisoft decides to work with. Concerns about competition in the cloud gaming market was the CMA's reasoning for initially blocking Microsoft's takeover of Activision, but the watchdog said in September that the Ubisoft concession "opens the door to the deal being cleared." A few weeks later, the CMA has rubberstamped the merger.

Microsoft also signed 10-year agreements with Nintendo and several cloud-gaming companies to offer its titles on their platforms. Those moves led to the European Union giving the merger the green light. The bloc's competition officials reportedly didn't see anything in the amended merger agreement (with the Ubisoft plan factored in) that would prompt a fresh antitrust investigation. 

The Federal Trade Commission's attempts to stop the deal over competition concerns haven't panned out. The agency sued to block it in December and an evidentiary hearing in that case was slated to take place on August 2nd. The FTC tried to temporarily block the merger with a preliminary injunction ahead of its administrative trial, but a judge denied that effort. 

The FTC still plans to challenge the merger. If that effort is successful, Microsoft could be forced to divest some or all of Activision Blizzard.

But for now, the deal is done. It means, among other things, that Activision Blizzard titles will be available on cloud gaming platforms for the first time since the publisher pulled its titles from GeForce Now in early 2020. Its games will surely join Game Pass in the very near future, including on Xbox Cloud Gaming, and they'll pop up on Ubisoft+ and other platforms Ubisoft works with.

Those waiting for Activision Blizzard's two biggest games of 2023 to hit Game Pass will certainly need to remain patient, though. The publisher has said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Diablo IV won't hit the service until next year.

Meanwhile, Blizzard games are already coming to Steam rather than being siloed on the Battle.net launcher. We'll probably see them appearing on Xbox's PC app too. For what it's worth, in court filings, Microsoft called Activision's strategy of releasing PC versions of Call of Duty titles exclusively on Battle.net in a bid to grow the platform a "resounding failure."

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One of the key reasons Microsoft gave for pursuing the deal was to accelerate its aim of becoming a major player in the mobile gaming market. With Activision Blizzard pulling in $1.9 billion in mobile revenue in the first six months of 2023 alone, it will achieve that goal practically overnight. 

King, which is behind the hugely successful Candy Crush franchise, generated more revenue ($1.49 billion) than Activision ($1.15 billion) in the first half of this year. Thanks largely to the massive success of Diablo IV, Blizzard brought in the most of the three units during that period with a hair over $1.5 billion. Still, King had 238 million monthly active users as of June 30th, just over twice as many as Activision and Blizzard combined. It recently emerged that Candy Crush Saga has generated over $20 billion in lifetime revenue.

Blizzard has also been making a push into mobile gaming with the likes of Diablo Immortal. Activision, meanwhile, has Call of Duty Mobile in its portfolio and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is on the way. The company said in its most recent earnings report Call of Duty has around 90 million monthly players, "with over half of all engagement on the mobile platform."

As for exclusivity of future projects, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has promised to "do whatever it takes" to keep shipping Call of Duty games on PlayStation. After months of refusing to do so, Sony eventually signed a 10-year pact just before the initial merger deadline of July 18th to keep that particular franchise on PlayStation, conceding defeat in its efforts to halt the acquisition. However, Microsoft will likely opt to keep other Activision Blizzard games off of PlayStation platforms, as it has done with ZeniMax/Bethesda titles Redfall and Starfield, as well as MachineGames' upcoming Indiana Jones project.

Meanwhile, many observers hope that Microsoft will help stamp out the alleged toxic workplace culture at Activision Blizzard. Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard paid $35 million to settle SEC charges related to how it handled employees' workplace misconduct complaints.

In 2021, the California Civil Rights Department (formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing) sued the company and accused it of fostering a "frat boy" culture in which female employees were harassed and discriminated against. Activision Blizzard countersued the CRD in December. The case hasn't been resolved. In fact, the CRD's lawsuit (which, along with other events, sent Activision's stock tumbling) set the ball rolling on Microsoft's acquisition of the company in the first place.

Microsoft owes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) $28.9 billion in back taxes, not including penalties and interest, at least according to the tax authority. The tech giant has revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it received a series of Notices of Proposed Adjustment (NOPAs) from the IRS for the tax years 2004 to 2013. In its filing, it said that it's been working with the IRS for nearly a decade to address the authority's questions about how it distributed its profits among countries and jurisdictions, and this is the agency's decision after a lengthy investigation. 

To be exact, the IRS audit centered around a practice known as "transfer pricing," which legally allowed companies to allocate profits and expenses between their operations in different regions. Microsoft explained that a lot of large multinational corporations practice this cost-sharing scheme to reflect "the global nature of their business." In its case, its subsidiaries shared in the costs of developing some IPs, which means that they're also entitled to the related profits. As AP notes, though, critics of the regulation argue that companies frequently use it to minimize the taxes they have to pay by reporting lower profits in high tax countries, and vice versa. 

Microsoft explained that the issues raised by the IRS are only relevant to those aforementioned years, because it has since changed its corporate structure and practices. Nevertheless, the IRS believes Microsoft owes $28.9 billion in back taxes. The tech giant disagrees, as expected, and said that newer tax laws could reduce the back taxes it owes from this particular audit by $10 billion. Based on its plan of action shared with the SEC, the company intends to contest the decision to the best of its ability: Microsoft said that it will pursue an appeal within the IRS, which typically takes years to complete, and will even "contest any unresolved issues through the courts" if needed.