“Three of the technology industry’s fiercest rivals — Amazon, Apple and Google — have aligned behind their shared business interest in promoting tech-friendly changes to the financial services sector,” Dawn Chmielewski reports for Re/code.
“The newly formed Washington, D.C., advocacy group Financial Innovation Now will look to influence the political debate on issues such as security and fraud prevention, real-time payments, online lending and access to basic financial services,” Chmielewski reports. “The contours of a changing world are already visible: More than 2,500 banks and credit unions support Apple’s mobile payments system, ApplePay, which is on track to be accepted at some 1.5 million retail locations by the end of the year.”
Chmielewski reports, “The group, which also includes Intuit and PayPal, will work to promote better security and authentication for users of financial services, access to basic financial services for the two billion people in the world who are underserved, speedier processing of payments and streamlined rules for online lending.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: More info: http://financialinnovationnow.org
Throw Intuit out now. They were lobbying to make IRS forms more complex so more people would need to seek their higher priced services. Simple tax returns should be automatic with IRS generated paperwork rather than paying $30-$50 every year for TurboTax or H&R Block. Apple may be on our side, Intuit probably not.
Your H&R Block numbers are off by an order of magnitude.
For personal service I agree. I was talking about buying the software. Even when it’s offered free, you seldom finish without having to upgrade to a paid version to cover some oddball situation.
But Congress has blocked allowing the IRS to simply generate a simple return for taxpayers based on the electronic W-2s, 1099s etc that have been submitted from various reporting entities, such as employers and banks. Even when Congress does nothing (110 work days next year), they screw citizens. Too bad you can’t vote “No” for Congress.
I like the idea and the alliance. From a security POV: About bloody time. This could be the coherent force needed to scour out the old, POS POS terminals and other grotesquely out-of-date and profoundly insecure computerized crap hounding the entire commerce world. Let’s keep an eye out here at MDN as to its progress.
Intuit has been coasting for a long time now. They have lost their edge.
I refuse to give them my money.
Intuit sucks donkey… Well, you get the idea.