OK, this post should be considered wild-ass speculation, but, since a great many industry analysts are paid a great deal of money for such seemingly random musings, where’s the harm in throwing another ill-based rumor on the pyre?
I noted three things I found interesting when it comes to my favorite consumer electronics company recently. First, in the past two keynotes Steve Jobs has made a point to emphasize that they have hundreds of millions of customers in the Apple music store… and “all with credit cards.” An odd statement, contextually, unless what they are planning is what happens. Follow…
The second thing was that Apple has replaced the previous Windows-mobile based applications in all of their Apple stores with iPod Touches, all equipped with credit card readers and a proprietary app that supports point of sale transactions. They use hardware attached to the device to read the card and you “sign” with a stylus that works with the biosensitive ipod touch screen. Boring stuff, you may think… well, read on.
The third and most interesting thing that I am seeing is that a lot of companies are pushing the idea of a “pay anyone” service, where you can send money through the web… or through a mobile device. A startup called Square, from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is targeting such a market opportunity with a dongel that you connect to an iPhone that allows you to accept a credit or debit card payment anywhere… and they get a cut of the transaction. The technology looks cool… but I think they are late to the game.
I think Apple is ready to ship an iPhone that supports personal payments, with card-swiping built in.
Crazy talk? Think about it. They have the infrastructure (“millions of users – all with credit cards on file”), they control the hardware, and they are already using apps to do transactions – millions, every day, in all their stores. Cloud they “leap-frog” all the banks and financial services companies and provide such a “ay anyone, anywhere” service? Yes… and they would be able to socialize personal payments better and quicker than any other company could. And they’ll get a cut of every transaction.
Again, this is wild and crazy speculation, and this could mean that Apple could end up being, affectively, a big bank… but I wouldn’t put it past them. After all, Apple likes to “think different” and “follow the money.”
And there’s a lot of money in transaction fees.