Mobile payment

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How big a thing could Touch ID mobile payment be? China alone hit $1.6 trillion last year

Ben Lovejoy Feb 18 2014 - 5:09 am PT

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With Tim Cook having as good as confirmed that mobile payment via Touch ID is on the way, numbers released by the People’s Bank of China and reported in TechNode provide an insight into just how big the mobile payment market could be. Total mobile payments in China last year hit 9.64 trillion yuan – equivalent to $1.59 trillion.

Mobile transactions on just one of China’s mobile payment services reached 25,000 per minute. While China has a population of 1.3B, contrasted with around 317M in the USA, and many of those in China use a mobile device as their primary Internet connection, it still illustrates what a huge opportunity iPhone-based payments could represent for Apple.

It’s been suggested that Apple’s approach may be to allow payment to be made via iTunes accounts, effectively turning Apple into a bank – a prediction I made last September. Using iTunes as a payment method would mean that customers would not have to hand over card details to retail stores. In the light of recent large scale card compromises at Neiman Marcus (1.1M cards) and Target (2M cards), this may well prove a strong reason for iPhone owners to use the service.

Via TNW

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PayPal feels the threat from Apple’s mobile payment plans, says it ‘wants to help’

Ben Lovejoy Jan 30 2014 - 7:29 am PT

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PayPal is clearly feeling the threat posed by Apple’s plans to use Touch ID to facilitate payment for physical goods from other retailers: re/code is reporting that the company has offered to help.

PayPal is essentially willing to white label parts of its payment service to be used in an Apple mobile payments system — anything from fraud detection to back-end infrastructure, even possibly down to the processing of payments.

“They’re telling them, ‘We’ll do it in the background,” one of these people said. “Basically, it’s just, ‘We want to be a part of this.’”

The plea is likely as desperate as it sounds, with two of the three payment industry execs re/code spoke to saying it’s unlikely Apple has any need of PayPal’s assistance. Apple has over 575 million iTunes accounts, most linked to credit cards, and already allows purchases from its own retail stores using the Apple Store app on iPhones. Apple also has patents in place for payment via both NFC and Bluetooth electronic wallet systems, so there doesn’t appear to be any part of the process the company couldn’t handle unaided.

PayPal’s relationship with Apple seems set to remain limited to that of a payment option for iTunes and online store purchases, and a reseller of iTunes gift cards.