Apple is considering using iMessage to make it easy for iOS to transfer users money to one another, according to a new report.
Given iMessage’s high level of encryption and existing popularity among users (particularly millennials), it makes perfect sense that Apple would use the software — rather than developing a completely new app — to further its mobile payment ambitions.
It was reported earlier this week that Apple is currently in talks with major U.S. banks to create a digital payment system to allow people to send money to each other from their iPhones, similar to services already offered by PayPal and Venmo.
Set to launch in 2016, Apple is said to be in conversations with JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo, and Citi. Cupertino may even run its money-sending service at a loss, without charging fees, since this will help grow Apple Pay as a platform — while giving customers another reason to pick iOS as their platform of choice.
With Tim Cook already claiming that the next generation of kids, “will not know what money is,” it seems Apple is staying bullish with its plans to take over the mobile payments space!
Source: Quartz
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “iMessage could power Apple’s peer-to-peer payments system”
Money is either paper (in the US), plastic (in Canada) and or made out of some form of metal in both countries. It is not credit or debt. If you can’t hold it then you will never know what money is. People would like to see paper, plastic or metal done away with altogether and just use the invisible version.
Unless I’m missing something about your post, money is, by definition, credit. Banknotes and the like are essentially IOUs. Since we parted ways with the gold standard, money isn’t linked to a specific resource like gold.