It's a foot in in the global financing system. Billion people buy their products, and given their price, I'm ready to bet that the number of people who finance their purchase instead of buying with cash is not insignificant. That's lots of interest payments.

Once they have a foothold in the finance sector they can start financing their own devices and capture that revenue, instead of letting it slip to third parties.

This makes incredible sense. Lots of large companies have financing services that are very profitable. Finance is one place where it's much easier to enter than self driving cars.

Now I'm a bit sad I don't own any apple stocks.

With this game plan they can increase their leverage in the consumer market enormously.