Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

131–140 of 203 posts

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

#131
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My whole family and many of my friends use iPhones. iPhones are extremely secure thanks to TouchID and Apple's software. Apple already has payment info for me and a good relationship with banks. They're normally pretty great at UI and can integrate it into the OS in ways no 3rd party ever could. It will be built into the phone and come preinstalled so I don't have to convince people to install it. Apple shows a lot m…

No disrespect but you didn't answer OP's question. Instead you went on with a bit of an advertisement about how great Apple is. Venmo has cracked this potential market (per the article they have great market share) I think Apple could build a tremendous P2P service based on your comments. But it's never going to be the platform lock in they desire because if we really do have meaningful broad adoption of P2P only cro…

I saw his question as 'why would I want an iPhone only service', so that's what I answered.

Venmo may have great market share among people using apps to pay friends. I'm suggesting the total pool of people is MUCH bigger and Apple could take a good chunk of those people, not unlike when the smartphone, tablet, MP3 player, or digital music store markets got MUCH bigger. Will they take it all? No. Probably not even 'most'. But there is still a large opportunity there.

I've never used Venmo, but I wonder if they'll survive or end up a player that was there too soon or at the start but is overtaken by the 2nd wave.

There are plenty of companies/brands that fit that model. Diamond Rio, Palm, ICQ, Blackberry...

Or maybe the banks will come in and crush this market somehow. I know many are trying (BoA, Chase, USAA), but they may not get the UX to work well or be willing to cooperate between banks.

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? I bank with Wells Fargo and to make a wire transfer to anyone in the US, I have to physically walk into a branch and it costs $20.

Chase has "QuickPay", where you just enter the recipient's info, and the transfer is near-instantaneous. Only works with other Chase customers, however. Other banks have similar systems.

Amusingly enough, Wells Fargo has a similar service called SurePay. I have a friend that also banks with Wells Fargo that uses this to transfer funds to be, while it's 'fast' compared to the multi-day delay of ACH transfers it still takes one day before the funds are made available to me - from another customer at the same bank!

It amazes me that we already have four major payment networks in the US that work at the speed of the internet - Visa, MasterCard, Discover and Amex but banks continue to fight to keep ACH slow - probably because they don't make bank on interchange fees.

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

#134
post #133

Apple got big money and only one successful product. They relentlessly want to own another successful product or service but I hope they won't.

You have to be kidding me. You don't get to be the biggest company on the planet with one successful product.

They may not be the biggest in everything they're successful at, but they don't need to be #1, as long as they're the #1 premium.

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

#135
post #112
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything Apple has ever done historically (with mobile) has been iOS-only, what possible reason would there be to suspect this would be any different?

Don't Apple Pay and Android Pay operate almost identically now? The original Google Wallet/Pay implementation which I used years ago via NFC was different. I don't believe the Android Pay name change is just branding.

I think Android Pay is like Apple Pay and Google Wallet is still available as a 'virtual' credit card that can be used with Android Pay.

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

#136
post #81

The question is why it hasn't happened sooner. This thing in your pocket is not just your telephone, but also your watch, map, calendar, contact book, music player, library, and so on. It can't be long before it's also your passport and your wallet. These are things that had a life as separate items in days of yore and separate websites not long ago. They're also things that naturally lend themselves to the format of…

Kenya has been doing this for close to a decade: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/ec...

Which is the key point. In Africa mobile payments have done more to boost the economy than almost anything else.

Arguably PayPal has done the same thing, but so many people have bad experiences with PayPal there would be a lot of love for a good alternative.

And of course it would lead to more Apple device lock-in. Tim Cook isn't going to hate that idea.

Maybe we should just sell the entire economy and everything in it to Apple and be done with it?

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? I bank with Wells Fargo and to make a wire transfer to anyone in the US, I have to physically walk into a branch and it costs $20.

Chase has "QuickPay", where you just enter the recipient's info, and the transfer is near-instantaneous. Only works with other Chase customers, however. Other banks have similar systems.

That's fairly useless if it doesn't work with other banks.

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

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chase has "QuickPay", where you just enter the recipient's info, and the transfer is near-instantaneous. Only works with other Chase customers, however. Other banks have similar systems.

That's fairly useless if it doesn't work with other banks.

A lot of people have Chase. I've used it a bunch of times.

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

#139
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Psssst

WhatsApp still doesn't have the new fancy encryption on iPhones, and you don't have to turn off SMS completely for iMessage; you just disable SMS fallback for users who are registered for iMessage

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

#140
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This will be fixed when it's needed. To deviate from the discussion, I don't know why Bitcoin doesn't move to a faster block time. Less time to confirm a transaction, more blocks per minute, more transactions per second.

It is very, very unlikely any major architectural tweak will happen with Bitcoin ever again. The only thing that will ever happen is maybe a few additional opcodes (to enable lightning networks perhaps) but even that will take many years.

(This isn't necessarily a bad thing... although I'm certainly not a fan of this approach)

Post reply on HN