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

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81–90 of 203 posts

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

#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...

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

#82
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And given the number of Android devices in the wild far, far surpasses the number of iOS devices... using this service seems like more of a hassle than not.

And given the number of Android devices in the wild far, far surpasses the number of iOS devices That's obviously true globally, but not for some of their more important markets. iOS and Android are roughly equivalent in the US for example, with the latter having maybe 10% more of the market – I think? While there's no doubt that instant money transfers are particularly useful in less developed markets, it's not like…

One of the key differences here (for me at least) between an apple only app (assuming that is the case) and something like square cash is that if the person I want to send money to doesn't have an iPhone, I wouldn't be able to send them money, whereas if they don't have square cash I can tell them to download it and then send them money and with the current promotion, even get $5 for referring them.

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

#83
post #61
post #5

With all the available options why would you want to use a service that requires you to figure out if the other person uses an iPhone?

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 cross platform offerings will work.

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

#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 cookies and such with it. Just paste in the account number, type in the amount, and hit the send key, done.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's definitely anecdotal, and as a sibling poster said, it depends on your circles. Mine anecdotally happens to be all square cash and no venmo given the ease of setup for square cash.

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

#86

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…

It has already happened. College students don't pay each other back in cash. They do so in Venmo

Yep, Venmo is the go-to on my campus. I actually prefer Square Cash as a product but Venmo has the adoption necessary.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be the latest push by Apple to integrate Apple Pay into some sort of payments ecosystem by force. I'm not sure why you'd consider this to be 'by force' – surely having a large market share, and offering a decent experience, are enough reasons for an ecosystem to develop because users want it?

surely having a large market share Having a large market share of what, the smartphone market? It's the users of the peer-to-peer payment service/application that they need, and they have 0 of those right now. Venmo already has millions of those users (many of whom who use iPhones) due to a good UX/UI and seamless integration with all major banks/card providers. So what value does apple bring to the table if my netwo…

Having a large market share of what, the smartphone market? It's the users of the peer-to-peer payment service/application that they need, and they have 0 of those right now.

I think having a large smartphone platform to which you can roll out new features is really useful! There are what – maybe 4-5 million active Apple Pay users? That's a decent chunk of in-built market for the service, assuming it's seamlessly available to them all.

Obviously P2P Apple Pay doesn't offer you much benefit if you've already got a working solution to the problem.

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

#88
post #65
post #5

With all the available options why would you want to use a service that requires you to figure out if the other person uses an iPhone?

iMessage doesn't require you to figure out if the other user has an iPhone. Do an OS update and all of a sudden messages just start turning blue for some people (along with other UX bonuses that are superior to the vanilla SMS experience) I would imagine that a consumer-to-consumer Apple Pay would work similarly. Hell, it might be integrated directly in the messages app.

The problem is texting was around way before the iPhone. So it wasn't an opportunity for Apple to create greater stickiness for iOS vs other operating systems. Apple could create a P2P offering that worked easily with non iOS phones. But that would appear to defeat the stated purpose of building such a service. Or at least significantly reduce it.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't live in the bay area.

Which means they don't have a huge incumbency.

I'm at school in upstate NY. Venmo dominates here as well. It's doing pretty well, but honestly is an unimpressive product.

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

#90
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And given the number of Android devices in the wild far, far surpasses the number of iOS devices That's obviously true globally, but not for some of their more important markets. iOS and Android are roughly equivalent in the US for example, with the latter having maybe 10% more of the market – I think? While there's no doubt that instant money transfers are particularly useful in less developed markets, it's not like…

One of the key differences here (for me at least) between an apple only app (assuming that is the case) and something like square cash is that if the person I want to send money to doesn't have an iPhone, I wouldn't be able to send them money, whereas if they don't have square cash I can tell them to download it and then send them money and with the current promotion, even get $5 for referring them.

Absolutely true - but i imagine the conversation is:

"I want to send you money. Do you have an iPhone?" "Yes" "Okay, here's the money."

versus

"Do you have an iPhone?" "No" "Okay, download SquareVenmoPal and I'll send it to you".

There's a built-in audience for Apple Pay that might prove to be beneficial.

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