Several reports have claimed that Apple is making moves to implement a mobile person-to-person payment system in its Apple Pay platform in the future. The new service would directly rival PayPal's Venmo should it hit the market.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, discussions are ongoing at the moment. It is not yet certain if any banks have stepped up to the plate and signed a deal with the Cupertino company at this time.
The publication claims the service would allow folks to send payment via their mobile devices to others from their checking account. The Wall Street Journal's source say that the service may launch in 2016 if everything goes according to plan.
At the moment, several banks are involved in talks with Apple, and they include the likes of Capital One, JPMorgan Chase & Co., U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo.
Should Apple go ahead with the launch of this new service, it would inject some well-needed movement in the person-to-person mobile payment market. Already, several companies have released similar services, but the market is still stuck in limbo. Google, Facebook and PayPal have all added their own service to the market, but not much progress has been made.
The mobile payment market was in a similar state of stagnation before Apple launched Apple Pay. The service became available three years after Google launched its Google Wallet service and quickly moved to the forefront.
A similar thing could happen to the person-to-person mobile payment market should Apple step in come 2016.
Still, the source claims to have no idea how Apple plans to make money from the service. The whole scheme could be a plan to get more folks using an iPhone to make payments rather than anything else. Furthermore, the source also claims that Apple will not charge the banks for participating, so right away it has the means to make payments less expensive when compared to other platforms.
At the end of the day, the overall use of smartphones for mobile payments around the world is still small, so a lot needs to be done.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr
