Apple is working on its own payment structure

The financial group Bloomberg has revealed new intentions for Apple to strengthen its position in the financial services market. According to undisclosed sources, Apple would consider creating a new structure dedicated to payments. This is a big step for the web giant, which will thus gain independence in this area.

Facts

Apple’s future structure would be entirely dedicated to payments and financial services. It would be completely internalized and would allow Apple to work autonomously on the future payment services that the group would like to deploy.

Apple would thus commit to:

– process payments internally,

– assess credit risk,

– analyze fraud,

– provide customer service.

Apple’s plan, dubbed “Breakout”, would be to do this over several years.

Issues

Consolidating its financial shift: Apple has broadened its business outside of hardware manufacturing over the years. Its turn towards financial services, now consolidated, was thus taken long ago. In addition to peer-to-peer payment and a wallet, the web giant has been offering its Apple Card since 2019 and is strengthening its credit-related business by also tackling the BNPL market in July 2021. Since then, Apple has given a boost to its financial strategy by turning its smartphones into EFTPOS, before announcing the acquisition of Credit Kudos more recently.

Gaining independence: Like the Apple Card, launched with Goldman Sachs, Apple has so far been dependent on partners and FinTechs to expand into the financial services market. Its new structure should above all allow it to internalize its skills.

Bringing the Apple wallet to product status: This strengthened strategy in terms of financial services illustrates the objectives of the group which, like its Chinese counterparts, is developing products that are almost independent of each other, and which will soon be integrated into the super app ecosystem that is IOS. Indeed, in addition to new perspectives in the field of payment Apple wallet is about to open up to identification services for its customers and has just made a big step in this direction in the United States.

Perspectives

New pressure is being put on Apple by developers, regulatory bodies and even Europe on two particularly problematic points relating to its dominant position in terms of payment within its ecosystem, and more generally, its anti-competitive practices in terms of e-commerce, Internet search and the Cloud.