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Manage your delivery channels hereRemove from myFTFirstFT: Apple retreats from financial servicesAlso in today’s newsletter, Biden to announce biggest immigration policy reform in years and the IMF’s ‘profound concerns’ about AIApple said it would offer a new instalment loan service through third-party credit and debit cards © Kathy Willens/AP

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Gordon Smith

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This article is an onsite version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters here

Good morning. Apple has scrapped its “buy now, pay later” service that launched in the US only last year, marking a retreat in the iPhone maker’s ambitions to become a major provider of traditional financial services.

Apple said it was moving to a new instalment loan service offered through third-party credit and debit cards. In the US it is partnering with Citi and Synchrony to offer the new service and with HSBC and Monzo banks in the UK. It also has partnerships in Australia and Spain.

Apple announced its BNPL service in 2022 and access began in March last year. The move was seen as a challenge to incumbents in the sector such as Klarna and Affirm but Apple is in the process of winding down its partnership with Goldman Sachs, its main banking partner since the launch of the Apple Card in 2019.

The new service is expected to launch with the next update to the iPhone operating system in September. Read more on Apple’s new longer-term loan service.

Here’s what else I’m following today:

• Monetary policy: Fed governor Adriana Kugler, Dallas Fed president Lorie Logan and Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee will participate in public events. The new president of the St Louis Fed, Alberto Musalem, will deliver a speech at an event hosted by the CFA Society of St Louis.

• Economic data: US retail sales are expected to have increased 0.2 per cent month-on-month in May following a flat reading in April.

• Companies: Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun testifies before a Senate homeland security and governmental affairs sub-committee and Citigroup hosts a services-focused investor day at its Manhattan headquarters.

• Nato: Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg meets US secretary of state Antony Blinken and members of the Senate foreign relations committee. The meeting comes as the military alliance prepares to pick a new leader.

• Putin in North Korea: President Vladimir Putin pledged his unwavering support for North Korea in a letter published in a North Korean paper ahead of a two-day visit to the hermit state.

Join Financial Times and Nikkei Asia journalists and an expert guest from the Asia Society at 11am ET today for a free online webinar: The US-China geopolitical relationship: what is the way ahead?

Five more top stories

1. Joe Biden is set to offer up to 500,000 undocumented spouses of Americans an easier path to legal status and US citizenship, marking the country’s most significant reform to immigration policy in years. The president is expected to unveil the policy in an executive order later today. Here’s what we know so far.

• More election news: US President Joe Biden will launch an assault on Donald Trump’s character in a $50mn ad campaign that paints his opponent as an “unhinged” felon intent on retribution. For regular election updates sign up for the Election Countdown newsletter.

2. The EU will defer the application of key provisions of post-crisis banking reforms by one year, arguing that expected US delays to Basel implementation would disadvantage lenders in Europe. The move, championed by France, raises further doubts over the enforcement of the so-called Basel III package. Here’s more on the Paris-led decision.

3. The IMF said it had “profound concerns” about massive labour disruptions and rising inequality as societies move towards generative AI. Era Dabla-Norris, deputy director at the IMF’s fiscal affairs department and co-author of a report published yesterday, said the “transition could be painful for workers” as AI leads to further automation of blue-collar jobs and threatens higher skilled and white-collar workers. Valentina Romei has more details.

4. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the war cabinet he set up in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack following the resignation of two of its five members. According to Israeli officials, Netanyahu will now hold meetings in smaller forums to discuss sensitive matters. The decision follows months of tension within the cabinet.

5. France’s corporate bosses are racing to build contacts with Marine Le Pen’s far right after recoiling from the radical tax-and-spend agenda of the rival left-wing alliance in the country’s snap parliamentary elections. Four senior executives and bankers told the FT that the left would be even worse for business than the Rassemblement National’s unfunded tax cuts and anti-immigration policies. Read the full report.

The Big Read© FT montage/Getty Images

The economic cost of mosquito-borne diseases has risen to an estimated $12bn a year as the insects become more prevalent and resistant to prevention. Deep in the bowels of Imperial College London, researchers are exploring ways to stem disease that are both ingenious and — in the case of genetic engineering — controversial.

We’re also reading and listening to . . . 

• Gideon Rachman: From France to America, the far right is on the march. Attitudes to democracy and the rule of law will define the distinctions in politics, writes our chief foreign affairs commentator.

• US Fed: The terminal rate for the upcoming rate reduction cycle depends on when it starts, writes Mohamed El-Erian. The longer central bankers wait to cut, the more the economy risks unnecessary harm.

• Tech Tonic