According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama is set to announce a new program called “SupplierPay” to help boost small businesses, and Apple is one of the 26 companies listed as having already signed on.
The program intends to send money down the supply chain and help strengthen contractors and smaller businesses by giving them access to lower-cost capital and thereby opening up opportunities for hiring more workers. This, the White House hopes, will increase investments at the small business level as well.
For Apple, this means paying the suppliers of the components it uses in its products in a more timely manner.
Specifically, the program is designed to make sure these contractors are payed within 15 days of being invoiced, which will hopefully lower their need to borrow money.
The program is similar to the already existing “QuickPay” initiative, which makes sure federal employers pay contractors in a reasonable amount of time. The “SupplierPay” program, the White House says, is intended to be “private-sector counterpart” to QuickPay.
