Apple Launches Klarna-Backed iPhone Leasing at $17.99 a Month

Apple unveiled “Upgrade,” a device-leasing program built with Klarna, replacing the older iPhone Upgrade Program that bundled financing with AppleCare. Pricing starts at $17.99 a month for iPhone, $11.99 for Apple Watch, $11.99 for iPad, and $24.99 for Mac. iPhone and Watch leases run one to two years; iPad and Mac leases stretch to two or three.

The mechanics matter more than the headline price. Klarna runs a soft credit check with no security deposit, meaning it doesn’t hit a customer’s credit score to sign up. At the end of the term, customers can hand the device back, buy it outright, or roll straight into a new lease on the latest model — the classic subscription-hardware pattern Apple has flirted with for years without fully committing to. Missed payments don’t trigger late fees, but three consecutive missed months terminate the lease, at which point Klarna’s collections process presumably takes over.

This is Apple formalizing something the market already pushed it toward. Carriers have run iPhone lease-to-own plans for years, and resale platforms have made “always have the newest iPhone” a normal consumer expectation rather than an aspirational one. By building its own leasing rail with Klarna instead of routing everything through carrier installment plans, Apple keeps more of the customer relationship — and the upgrade-cycle data — in-house.

For Klarna, this is a marquee validation of its buy-now-pay-later infrastructure at a scale most retail partnerships don’t reach. Landing Apple as a leasing partner, across four product lines simultaneously, is a different tier of credibility than the checkout-page BNPL button Klarna is known for. It also pushes Klarna deeper into recurring, longer-duration credit products rather than short-term point-of-sale loans, which is a materially different risk profile — lease defaults on a $1,000+ device play out very differently than a missed $50 installment.

The bigger signal is what this means for Apple’s revenue model going forward. A functioning lease program smooths hardware revenue into a subscription-like cadence, encourages more frequent upgrades than the typical three-to-four-year replacement cycle, and locks customers into Apple’s ecosystem through a recurring payment relationship rather than a one-time purchase. If Upgrade performs the way Apple hopes, don’t be surprised if lease terms start showing up bundled with Apple One or iCloud+ pricing tiers next.

Sources

• Apple plans to lease iPhones for $17.99 a month through Klarna deal