As reported on the blog Letsgodigital, it looks like Apple is looking at ways to enhance its payments offering in Europe. Specifically, it looks like they’re entering PayPal territory with a European patent application that will involved person to person payments. Payments between people are expected to become available via iMessages in some territories very soon, after recent news. But it looks like that this relates to a previously revealed service called Apple Pay Cash which has yet to debut
The app is currently already available in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. The application is billed in the submission as “Computer software used to process mobile payments; computer software for use in contactless transactions with retailers, merchants, and vendors via mobile devices used to process mobile payments.”
All will be revealed in less than a week, it seems. That’s when the new iOS software upgrade will be launched. And it seems possible that could include Pay Cash as an extension of Apple Pay. They has already confirmed that iOS 11 will support peer-to-peer payment capabilities in iMessage.
Apparently the new features will mean that users can send money to friends and family easily via iMessages without the use of a service such as PayPal or Venmo. It’s reported that balances will be stored within the Apple Pay Cash virtual card in the Wallet App. Funds can be transferred to bank accounts or used via the virtual card and spent via Apple Pay.
There’s no doubt that innovation by the major payments firms is important and interesting. In particular, a move from someone like Apple, makes for interesting competition. Even if you’re not a user of Apple hardware you likely use some of their software or services. But the established payment players don’t have an unremitting position when others come a knocking.
