Apple Cash? Cupertino Said to Be Working on Venmo Competitor

The report says Apple has recently held discussions with payments industry partners to introduce a money-transfer service, which would allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to other iPhone owners. The service could be announced later this year.

This isn’t the first time Apple thought about launching a money-transfer service. Talks among various stakeholders were held in 2015, although no new service was launched.Were “Apple Cash” to launch, it would compete with offerings already available from big banks and others. The growing digital money-transfers market is currently being lead by Chase’s QuickPay service, which processed $28 billion in transfers last year. PayPal’s Venmo followed with $17.6 billion in transactions.

Were “Apple Cash” to launch, it would compete with offerings already available from big banks and others. The growing digital money-transfers market is currently being lead by Chase’s QuickPay service, which processed $28 billion in transfers last year. PayPal’s Venmo followed with $17.6 billion in transactions.

Recode notes:

These services have typically been money losers for the new entrants in the space, but are seen as the gateway to the next generation of payment and personal finance services.

Apple is also said to be working with Visa about creating pre-paid cards that would work on Visa’s debit network. The cards would work with the peer-to-peer service mentioned above.

Recode explains:

People would be able to use the Apple cards to spend money sent to them through the new service, without having to wait for it to clear to their bank account.

Apple Pay was first announced at the iPhone 6 launch event in September 2014. Perhaps we’ll be hearing about new Apple money offerings this fall at the “iPhone 8” event.

Do you already use a money-transfer service like Venmo or Square Cash? Which one? Would you embrace Apple Cash?