Apple was a step too far for me. I have held onto this since...

Apple was a step too far for me. I have held onto this since 2016 so seen my fair share of ups and downs along with news of competition coming into the market. I have been comfortable shrugging of the likes of PayPal, Zip, Klarna and the rest. in the back of my mind I also thought Apple could be a suitor to purchase Afterpay but it looks like they will be going their own route. They have Goldman Sachs as the financier so I don't think they will have any issues with being able to service the underlying transactions. The way they have offered it across there Apple Pay platform which is already widely offered means they will be instantly global once they get going. they also have more resources than Afterpay to excetute the roll out and if need be could poach some of Afterpays talents. I know "moats" are a touchy subject so I'll refer to it as a "competitive advantage" and one that I saw value in that Afterpay had was its brand image, you can see this coming through the style of advertising and other social media posts and yes it does make a difference. it's also something that is hard to develop and takes a long time to establish. Competition so far have had poor brand images but Apple ID arguably has one of the best brand images out their. the service they are going to offer is a combination of Afterpay's pay in four and Klana's longer term interest bearing lending so from that perspective has the best of both worlds. Obviously Apple aren't going to show up tomorrow and steal 100% of the market but I think over time you'll see them become the dominant player as they have done in the other markets they operate in. Even though Apples going there own way there could still be acquirers out there in the likes of Amazon or Google should they want to hit the ground running, these two don't really have the same infrastructure out there like Apple does. As with anything value is a ralative
metric so if I think Afterpay has come back too far then I won't hesitate to jump back on board.

not trying to sway anybody's thinking or prove anyone is wrong or right, just providing my opinion. Anyone reading this should think very carefully before they make any financial decisions.