A long-rumored move by Apple is reportedly one step closer to becoming a reality today.
What's it all about?
The Wall Street Journal says that Apple is looking into a way to expand its mobile payments efforts into a means by which its users can pay for physical goods using iOS mobile devices via their existing iTunes accounts.
How does it work?
Using the Apple Store app, users can scan barcodes of products and then authenticate and finalize the
purchase using their iTunes Store credentials, the same way they can pay for digital goods including movies and music.
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Is it really going to work?
Apple’s existing stockpile of
consumer cards on file makes this move seemingly inevitable: it had 600 million users with credit cards on file as of late last year, according to analyst estimates.
To put that in perspective, PayPal has around 137 million active accounts, according to the company’s own current figures. The dormant potential for Apple is huge, in other words.
Building a system for payments into the fabric of iOS also makes sense in terms of Apple’s recent
moves with regards to R&D and actual shipping technology.
It introduced Touch ID with the iPhone 5s, for instance, which provides a secondary authentication tech to help verify the identity of a user (Touch ID is already used for virtual good purchases made through the iTunes store), and with iOS 7 it debuted iBeacons, which can be
used as an NFC-style vehicle for conducting device-based mobile transactions in-store.
Finally, Apple just recently filed for a new patent that would allow its devices to securely store payment information, and then authorize purchases in a way that doesn’t convey any sensitive user data.
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