“On January 30, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a major patent application from Apple that reveals a new financial Systems Integration System,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple. “Apple’s invention relates to financing integration with an e-commerce marketplace, and more specifically, the present technology relates to a Financing Systems Integration system that allows customers to shop-and-checkout using a Loan ID.”
“Apple currently has a treasure trove of inventions relating to a future iWallet system but this is a new beast all together,” Purcher reports. “The patent filing illustrates that Apple is investigating the whole financial matrix and not just the electronic wallet side of the equation. ”
“Apple’s patent dives into creating a system to handle all sorts of loans, from student loans to Business-to-Business loans and everything in between,” Purcher reports. “In one part, Apple’s financial system almost hints of one day bypassing the credit card system entirely.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
PayPal wants to partner with Apple in mobile payments, sources say – January 30, 2014
iWallet: Apple exploring expansion of mobile payments, sources say – January 25, 2014
Apple patent application reveals secure iWallet system with iBeacon – January 16, 2014
Apple’s revolutionary iWallet is coming – December 10, 2013
Apple could have 250 million iBeacon-capable units in the wild by 2014 – December 7, 2013
Apple turns on iBeacon to guide shoppers at 254 U.S. retail stores – December 6, 2013
Analyst: Apple to reach 600 million users with credit card accounts on file by year end – June 4, 2013
I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be happy with that. None of them work for card issuing banks.
And now we know why Apple has been hoarding all that cash…. Need to be well-capitalized to become a major banking entity.
Bank of Apple. Just a suggestion Tim. Start hammering home who do you trust when it comes to platforms & online banking systems. Sure makes one ponder about Apple’s multiple server farms. Apple ain’t stupid.
i think that’s already Tim (& Oppi’s) plan. He did say they were going to try and disrupt one more market this year, why not banking??
They have it already…
Braeburn Capital it is 😉
Apple could be a bank itself. Wall Street punishes Apple for hoarding all the cash. It is Apple hard earned-money.
I AAPL starts going up that could be evidence of “all” banks and credit card companies banding together to buy up and put Apple out of business. I’m not selling.
How many banks have 150B cash on hand?
There is somewhere near 1-4 trillion smuggled out of China and located in Carribean banks.
There will need to be some instant and severe restrictions if a $4 trillion amount was ever used to try to control major US markets.
Perhaps they can illuminate Wall Street altogether
Shine a spotlight on that!
I’m not sure that Apple would want to be a bank per se. Consider all the regulation that a bank deals with, especially if it’s a bank that has international operations. From Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulations in the US to Basel II and Basel III regulations globally, that’s only scratching the surface.
Instead, take a look at the financials for the major card processors, Visa and MasterCard. They’re stunning. Both companies are growing rapidly, generating tons of cash, and neither has a penny of debt on their balance sheet. THAT is the kind of business a company like Apple would not mind having.
Processing billions of dollars of global transactions daily and taking a three to four percent cut is a nice business model. Given that Apple may have over 300 million user accounts for iTunes, the App Store and Apple IDs gives it access to a wealth of potential. It is one of the few companies that could attempt this.
I have a hunch that Apple has been at work on this for many years, weaving a quilt of hardware and software technology, patents, trademarks, partnerships, systems and customer accounts. The company has watched and learned from failed attempts by the credit card clearing houses and competitors like Google. Rather than rush into this prematurely, Apple has moved deliberately, putting all the pieces into place.
This might yet take more time, and no doubt, the negotiations that Eddy Cue and his team have been undertaking have been frustratingly slow (just look how long and complicated the negotiations were to land the China Mobile deal). That is no fault of Apple, but rather the apprehension on the part of companies with which Apple will have to partner in order for an initiative of this magnitude to happen.
This is more than an iWatch. It’s more than iBeacon. More than iCloud. More than iTunes and more than the iPhone, more than iWallet, more than TouchID. It could be ALL of these, along with many other developments we only hear about tangentially in patent filings, rumors and other dispatches. I suspect we’re seeing a version of the three blind men who try to describe a tree when we read of all this, and we may not have a clear idea of how this is really shaping up yet. It might not be one simple product, but a matrix of many technologies, partnership deals and other developments that make this idea eventually happen.
To the pundits and analysts to question Apple, I wonder if they have any clue of what could soon transpire. If what we suspect is true, many of the pieces could already be in place, waiting for the right moment to be brought together as a whole.
The future could be fascinating indeed. It’s why I would not underestimate a Tim Cook and his executive team. They are likely many moves ahead of all of us. Time will tell.
Master Card and VISA are raking in cash by screwing people. I’m not sure they would be a good corporate fit for Apple.
I am guessing Visa/Master will lobby the congress to cut apple out in thus case? Never know.