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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

#151

Post by alwillis »

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.

Apple has several things going for it if it wanted to created a person-to-person payment system:

* hundreds of millions of NFC-enabled, Touch ID-capable devices

* the platform vendor advantage: it would come pre-installed on new devices and in a future iOS update

* users already transact billions of dollars through Apple services: Apple Pay, iTunes and the App Store

* unlike many banks and retailers, Apple Pay hasn't been hacked

Not only could Apple create a Venmo or PayPal-like service using ACH, it would do something with in-person payments further down the line thanks to NFC and Touch ID.

Just as we've seen a large drop in the use of Google Maps on iOS once Apple Maps was good enough and came pre-installed, the same would happen with Venmo, PayPal, Square Cash and the rest, especially for those folks who've never used any of those services and are getting their first smartphone or dipping their toe into app-mediated payments for the first time.

Some people have speculated about Apple doing some kind of cryptocurrency (Dell and Microsoft accept bitcoin, for example), what they really need is real-time, multi-currency transactions, with the ability to create their own currency or token if they wanted to and that's Ripple: https://ripple.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-ripple/. Ripple would enable Apple to do its favorite thing: cut out the middle man. And of course, Ripple would allow users to transact in whatever cryptocurrency they wanted to in addition to fiat currencies.

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

#152

Post by mixmastamyk »

seekingcharlie wrote: post #108
mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

This still astounds me. I'm Australian but also hold a US account. The difference in ease between the two is insane. I cannot believe how difficult it is to simply wire money from a US bank account. In Australia, you can make a free transfer entirely from web/app and it will be received, often the next day. It's no wonder why Paypal/Venmo are so huge in the US...

In NZ it is immediate if same bank, 10pm that night if different. That few hours though can be nice if you change your mind.

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

#153

Post by mahyarm »

habosa wrote: post #95

I'll use Venmo until they pry it from my hands, it's one of the most life-transforming services I have ever used. I'll just repost my comment from the last Venmo thread here: ========================================= Venmo was started by UPenn alums so it was popular among my friends long before it was a phenomenon (one of my good friends interned there and wrote the BlackBerry app). I used to use it exclusively by S…

I find venmo kludgey and irritating compared to square cash.

It's more of a pain to sign up for, you have to manually ask for your money, they publicly transmit your transaction history to the world and it's not obvious that they do so. They also send you 'anti-fraud' emails if you make joke comments about your terrorist sandwich.

It's like a paypal, but worse.

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

#154

Post by alexforster »

habosa wrote: post #144
jaysonelliot wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venmo still takes several days to transfer the money to your account, and you have to remember to request the funds—they don't even begin the transfer process until you do that. It would literally be faster to write your friend a check. We need instant cash transfers in the United States, like the rest of the world has.

My Venmo cashout transfers take How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? I thought the ACH method was still in use not because we're technologically slow (see: High Frequency Trading) but because it saves a huge amount of coordination to sum up net inter-bank transfers at the end of the day rather than constantly shuffling money around due to the fact that the net is often very small.

> How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers?

The same way the US stock markets can do 5 billion trades per month in realtime, with technology: technology that costs money, wipes out a major investment revenue stream, and necessitates cooperation between competitors. Does it surprise anyone that the EU pulled this off and the US is the farthest behind?

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

#155

Post by seekingcharlie »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #146
seekingcharlie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still astounds me. I'm Australian but also hold a US account. The difference in ease between the two is insane. I cannot believe how difficult it is to simply wire money from a US bank account. In Australia, you can make a free transfer entirely from web/app and it will be received, often the next day. It's no wonder why Paypal/Venmo are so huge in the US...

"In Australia, you can make a free transfer entirely from web/app and it will be received, often the next day." In the UK or China, it's minutes/hours, as long as you do the transfer before a certain time.

Sorry, should edit that - it's immediate for us in Australia if you have transferred to a certain person before OR if you use the same bank.

It's the next day for external banks / people that you haven't transferred to before.

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

#156

Post by aeontech »

WhySoCEREAL wrote: post #110
mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

Planet Money actually did a podcast about this. Banks are basically incentivized not to have it and keep ACH that way it is. A free and fast transfer service would destroy their wire revenue stream. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episo...

Yup. BofA charges $35 or $45 for wire transfers. That's a hell of a lot of money when you have 200'000'000 captive customers.

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

#157

Post by soared »

habosa wrote: post #95

I'll use Venmo until they pry it from my hands, it's one of the most life-transforming services I have ever used. I'll just repost my comment from the last Venmo thread here: ========================================= Venmo was started by UPenn alums so it was popular among my friends long before it was a phenomenon (one of my good friends interned there and wrote the BlackBerry app). I used to use it exclusively by S…

Paypal is free for personal use.

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

#158

Post by joe5150 »

snuxoll wrote: post #132
lobster_johnson wrote: post #121

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.

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…

Banks use the float caused by check processing and transfer delays as investable funds. They have no real incentive to speed up the process, and most measures to reduce delays have come in the form of regulations.

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

#159

Post by jeffasinger »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #84

The US is so archaic in banking I'm not surprised that it takes Apple to do something about it, a shame. I'm still sending a paper check to the landlord every month, ha! What is this, the 70's? The rest of the world already has direct, often immediate, free money transfers a few clicks away, and for a long time. We should focus there, rather than inserting more middle-men. When I was in New Zealand, we even paid for…

Things should get better, to some extent, with Same Day ACH.

Starting September 2016, their should be relatively cheap next day ACH transactions available to the majority of US bank accounts.

It's far from perfect: still not instant, will probably cost money (interbank fee of about $0.09), and won't immediately support debits. However, it's a big step forward for US banks.

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

#160

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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?

Well, they managed just that for payments with Apple Pay -- and with the iPod, iPhone, iPad etc for their respective markets, so...

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