We have been hearing many rumors that Apple could be planning on launching a mobile payments service of their own. On some level it makes sense given that Apple already has millions of credit cards on file, and combine that with Touch ID as a means to authenticate purchases, it sounds like a pretty solid system.
However according to a group of analysts, it seems that Apple’s mobile payment service, which has been dubbed “iWallet”, might not necessarily be a money maker for Apple. Instead the service is seen as a way for Apple to lock users into the iPhone ecosystem. The analysts have suggested that Apple’s iWallet would be more like a virtual credit card holder where users could carry virtual versions of their credit cards.
They also expect that Apple will be taking a cut from the transactions but according to one of the analysts, even if all iPhone users were to utilize the feature, it would only raise Apple’s earnings by 0.5 percent, meaning that it would not have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.
However like we said, it seems that the goal here is to lock users into the iPhone ecosystem where customers would eventually get used to, and possibly become dependent, on the iPhone’s mobile payment system that future smartphone purchases will be of the iPhone variety. It remains to be seen if that will be the case, but hopefully we will learn more next week.
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