*NEW RESEARCH* FintechViews: Apple P2P – Crossing the Line

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier this month may have underwhelmed its fan-base who are always hoping for a shiny new toy, but there was an intriguing nugget in there for the payments industry.

Apple announced that the new iOS11 (later this year) will enable ApplePay users (albeit initially only in the US) to send money to friends and family through iMessage.

Now it could be argued that this is just an attempt to drive up ApplePay penetration (which is poor in the US) especially amongst the key millennial segment, but the other aspect of the proposition is that when funds are sent the recipient receives the funds into an ‘Apple Cash’ account. This is an ewallet, a bit like a PayPal account. The Apple Cash balance can be used instantly for ApplePay transactions (paying in-store, online or for another P2P), or be transferred to a bank account.

For the first time, ApplePay is moving from being a digital version of a leather wallet, i.e. just a container for your various cards, to actually having its own store of value. And why is that significant? Well that’s how Alipay started, and they have built from that foundation to be the go-to place for a wide range of financial services; bill payments, savings, loans, investments, insurance….

So this announcement, tucked away as an iOS iMessage feature update, crosses an important line in establishing a key foundation for potentially a much wider play for Apple in financial services.

Subscribers can read more insight and analysis of this key development in our latest FintechViews report, Apple P2P – Crossing the Line.

Posted by Peter Roe at '09:15' - Tagged: financialservices   mobility   payments