“Apple is beefing up its mobile wallet with the addition of a Venmo-like payments service that lets users send money to each other, the company announced on Monday at its annual WWDC developer conference,” Leena Rao reports for Fortune. “The new payments service is part of Apple Pay.”
“The new payments service is similar to Venmo, the PayPal-owned payments app that has become popular with younger users to make small, cashless transfers, such as paying a friend for dinner, using a mobile phone,” Rao reports. “PayPal has said Venmo is one of its fastest growing services, with Venmo processing more than $17.6 billion in payments in 2016, up 135% from the previous year.”
“The feature will be released as part of Apple’s newest version of its mobile software, iOS 11. One big differentiator with Venmo is that Apple’s payments service only allows users to send money to others who have an iPhone or iPad,” Rao reports. “Users will not be able to send money to people who have Android devices.”
“Another key differentiator between Apple Pay’s iMessage-based service and Venmo is that users don’t have to make these payments through a separate app, like with Venmo,” Rao reports. “Apple also doesn’t have the burden of having to make money from payments by taking a cut of every transaction. PayPal on the other hand, has been trying to make money from Venmo by charging merchants fees to use the service to accept payments.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Payment services need people with money and the will to spend it. You know, like Apple product owners. P2P Apple Pay will flourish. And, if Apple ever decides to open this up to fragmandroid settlers, buh-bye Venmo et al.