“Wall Street gossips tell us that Apple executives have dropped hints suggesting the company is considering creating a service that would allow iTunes Store account holders to use those accounts to make purchases on participating third-party sites across the Internet,” Nicholas Carlson reports for The Business Insider.
“Such a service would make Apple a direct competitor to eBay’s PayPal and Facebook’s still-in-testing, rumored-to-be-huge ‘Pay With Facebook’ platform,” Carlson reports.
“iPhone users can already use their iTunes accounts to buy some virtual and subscription goods in third-party iPhone applications. That service charges developers 30% per transaction though. For a PayPal rival from Apple to take off on the rest of the Internet… that cut would have to come way down,” Carlson reports.
Carlson writes, “Maybe Apple sees PayPal for what is: an unwieldy clunker of a service that missed its chance. Maybe Apple sees the online payments business as low-hanging fruit — an easy way to diversify its business.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: According to eBay’s latest earnings report, released on July 22, 2009, PayPal has 75.4 million active accounts. Apple’s iTunes Store had over 75 million active credit card accounts as of January 2009 and has roughly 82+ million currently, likely more*.
*Apple’s iTunes Store celebrated its 6th year anniversary on April 28th. 5.66 years * 365 days = 2,070. 75 million accounts / 2070 days = 36,232 accounts per day average over a period of 5.66 years. After roughly 7 months since Apple’s January figures (210 days approx.), iTunes Store stands somewhere around 82 million (210*36,232=7,608,720 accounts added since January). This is a conservative estimate because iTunes Store adds considerably more users these days than it did in its early years.
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