Apple has been flirting with the idea of rivaling Venmo for years, but it seems that they are finally gearing up to launch a service later this year called Apple Cash to do just that.
Apple Pay was introduced in 2014, which allowed users to store their Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit cards in their smartphone. However, the growth hasn’t been too exciting.
Apple reported 86 million users this year, while Samsung Pay has 34 million and Android Pay has 24 million.
So, the launch of a new service like Venmo could help get more people into the Apple Pay ecosystem and dominate the market.
Apple recently held discussions with payments industry partners about introducing its own Venmo competitor. The Apple Cash service would allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to other iPhone owners.
Last year, Venmo was on track to process $20 billion in payments, and it seems Apple wants a piece of that.
According to sources, Apple has also been in close talks with Visa to develop its own digital pre-paid debit cards that would run on the Visa network and be linked to the new payment service.
Users would be able to use the Apple cards to spend money sent to them through the new service, without having to wait for it to clear to their bank account.
Also, unlike with Apple Pay, the company may not charge fee on transactions.
This will be an interesting story to follow.