Apple working on iPhone-to-iPhone payments
Apple doesn’t want to become a bank, insists chief exec Tim Cook, shutting down longstanding rumours that the tech giant will be pushing into the financial services industry.
But on the same day, a new report suggests that Apple has big plans for a new mobile payment system: one that would allow iPhone users to send money to one another – using only their mobile phones.
This may seem contradictory alongside Tim Cook’s assertion that Apple wouldn’t be moving into the financial services industry, saying at a talk at Trinity College Dublin:
Nobody wants to become a bank anymore. And we don't want to become a bank.
The plan, it seems, is to connect with existing financial infrastructure, rather than building its own.
The system would essentially be an expanded version of Apple Pay, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which suggests the company is already discussing development of the payments system with several major US banks.
Apple patented person-to-person payments system in early 2015.