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Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

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Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#41

Post by matthewmacleod »

Alupis wrote: post #32
matthewmacleod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, do bear in mind that the iPhone is pretty popular – so you've probably got a decent chance of wanting to transfer money to someone with a compatible device – maybe 25% or so? Knowing Apple's UX, it'll be rather easy-to-use if it's available – so I'm not sure that the overhead of 'figuring out if the other person uses an iPhone' would be any higher than figuring out if they use Venmo or PayPal or Square or whate…

> Knowing Apple's UX, it'll be rather easy-to-use How can we assume this? This exact thing has been tried many, many times - and sometimes to great success. What inherently makes you believe Apple's spin will be so much better than the other services and their unique problems? The challenge Apple will face has nothing to do with UX - it will have to do with userbase. It's likely (although not absolute) that using thi…

How can we assume this?

Obviously we can't know for sure – but it does seem like a pretty safe assumption. Apple Pay is a good experience at the moment; it's easy to see how that experience could be extended to inter-device transfers (bring them close together, enter the amount to transfer, Touch ID and done – or something similar).

The challenge Apple will face has nothing to do with UX - it will have to do with user base.

The service will likely be available instantly to literally tens of millions of people with no additional effort on their part, as soon as Apple roll out a software update. That's a big benefit for Apple.

It's likely (although not absolute) that using this service will require an iOS device. Given Android devices far outnumber iOS devices, this may pose a problem.

I think I responded to this elsewhere, but that's only true globally. Bear in mind that even Apple Pay is only available in the US and the UK at the moment; iOS share in those countries is around 40%.

Other services like PayPal and Square are universal services (device agnostic), and accounts are free (compared to Apple's barrier to entry which will likely cost you an iOS device).

They do have the additional barrier of not being available to all users by default, though.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#42

Post by nhstanley »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #37
adpirz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincerely curious - which is? This sounded like a direct competitor to Venmo to me.

Square Cash? Facebook's... money thing? (What's it called?) Even PayPal itself!

I know this is anecdotal, but everyone I know uses Venmo. I have never met anyone who uses Square Cash or Messenger, and I have both apps. To be fair, I don't know anyone in the US that uses WhatsApp, but all my friends in Europe use it. So, maybe it's a regional thing? I would love to see real usage statistics on those.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#43

Post by sunnyps »

happyscrappy wrote: post #26
drcode wrote: post #12

Yes! I was just thinking: One hundred person-to-person payment services aren't enough... we need 101! Seriously though, Apple has a terrible time creating online services ( http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-and-the-cloud-a-magnifice... ) and there is no way another entry in the "Proprietary, heavily policed, middle-man-encumbered social payment tool" is going to go anywhere.

There are a lot of encrypted messaging apps but only iMessage is actually usable, plus Apple already has your billing info.

Whatsapp would like to have a word with you. With iMessage you have to turn off SMS to make it really secure and once you do that you lose the ability to communicate with a large number of non-iOS users. OTOH Whatsapp is secure by default.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#44

Post by toomuchtodo »

happyscrappy wrote: post #34
roymurdock wrote: post #7

Last bit of the title is "...Payment Service Like Venmo" Seems to be the latest push by Apple to integrate Apple Pay into some sort of payments ecosystem by force. Should be interesting to see if there is any compelling reason to use Apple's solution over Venmo which has a huge incumbency advantage at this point.

There is no friction to use it, Apple already has the credit card info. Paypal should be scared.

If Apple Pay had UX to pick someone near you also in Apple Pay to transfer funds too.....oh my!

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#45

Post by jjtheblunt »

drcode wrote: post #12

Yes! I was just thinking: One hundred person-to-person payment services aren't enough... we need 101! Seriously though, Apple has a terrible time creating online services ( http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-and-the-cloud-a-magnifice... ) and there is no way another entry in the "Proprietary, heavily policed, middle-man-encumbered social payment tool" is going to go anywhere.

Are you kidding? The ubiquity of very secure hardware in iPhone 6 and later phones does not present a uniquely trusted advantage, over the many clumsy-to-use earlier startups?

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#46

Post by roymurdock »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
roymurdock wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal owns Venmo, so they have a fair amount of weight to throw around, especially in the payments/ACH space.

Doesn't Apple generate more profit per quarter than Paypal does all year?

Sure, but you might have made the same argument with Facebook when it launched "Poke" (2012) and "Slingshot" (2014) in order to compete with newcomer Snapchat, and we see how that turned out due to poor execution and the incumbency factor.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/facebook-poke-vs-snapchat-w...

https://gigaom.com/2014/09/04/facebooks-slingshot-experiment...

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#47

Post by drcode »

unfunco wrote: post #39
nnd wrote: post #36

Why do you need banks, when you can just transfer Bitcoin?

If Apple introduces this, it will likely require scalability higher than that of the current blockchain, which allows for roughly seven transactions per second. Peer-to-peer is definitely the way forward, but for now, banks have the infrastructure, and the customers.

There are cryptocurrencies now with more scalable architectures... I'm just counting my blessings that Apple is foolish enough to build another centralized system that is sure to be hobbled by AML requirements and misguided fraud-prevention measures.

Having a centrally-mediated, proprietary cryptocurrency endorsed by Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook is the worst thing that could happen to the cryptocurrency community right now, so I'm glad none of these companies are pursuing this opportunity yet.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#48

Post by ska »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #21
revscat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because access to the source and target accounts still needs to be coordinated, and the appropriate withdrawal/deposit handled. Although it is interesting to consider, we are not yet at the point where our devices hold "actual" money.

Arguably Bitcoin is there.

Arguably, but it isn't a very good argument in 2015.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#49

Post by happyscrappy »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #44
happyscrappy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no friction to use it, Apple already has the credit card info. Paypal should be scared.

If Apple Pay had UX to pick someone near you also in Apple Pay to transfer funds too.....oh my!

I assume that is exactly what they have in mind.

Re: Apple in Talks with US Banks to Develop Mobile Person-To-Person Payment Service

#50

Post by drcode »

codyb wrote: post #24
drcode wrote: post #12

Yes! I was just thinking: One hundred person-to-person payment services aren't enough... we need 101! Seriously though, Apple has a terrible time creating online services ( http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-and-the-cloud-a-magnifice... ) and there is no way another entry in the "Proprietary, heavily policed, middle-man-encumbered social payment tool" is going to go anywhere.

There's plenty of mapping services and there was one predominant one, and yet Apple took a huge chunk of that market from Google just by having their maps preinstalled on their phones. Apple pay works really nicely. I could see using this new person to person service instead of Venmo if it comes preinstalled, works nicely, has Apple's generally strong privacy controls and policies, and is super simple to use. Seems l…

Yes, apple could probably capture 10% of this market and make some profit.

If that is your yardstick for "success", they can reach it.

But fracturing the market by yet another 10% is not my idea of the future of money.

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