Apple in Talks with U.S. Banks for Mobile Person-to-Person Payments: WSJ

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks with U.S. banks J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Capital One Financial Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp., to setup a mobile person-to-person payments service:

Apple Inc. is in discussions with U.S. banks to develop a mobile person-to-person payment service that would compete with PayPal Inc.’s popular Venmo platform, according to people familiar with the talks.

People familiar with the matter note it is unclear whether a deal has been struck with Apple and details remain unknown as to how the service will work and tie into existing bank networks.

The service would allow iPhone users to send payments to others from their chequing accounts directly to another iOS device, likely tied together with Apple Pay, as yet another way to entrench users into the company’s ecosystem.

Unnamed sources speaking with the WSJ claim a launch is not imminent, but may debut sometime in 2016, and could possibly be linked into an existing bank payment service called clearXchange, which is similar to Interac e-Transfers in Canada, that allows payments to email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

A person familiar with talks says Apple would not charge banks for being part of this new service, unlike Apple Pay, which the company takes a small fee from each transaction.

There’s no word if Apple would ever bring such a service to Canada, as that would require negotiation with Canada’s big banks that operate existing Interac e-Transfers. Given that we are still waiting for Apple Pay to launch here with support from Canadian banks, it may take a while for such an idea to come forth here.

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