Apple is reportedly working on a multi-year plan to develop its own payment processing (opens in new tab) technology and infrastructure in an effort to further build out its portfolio of financial products.
As reported by Bloomberg (opens in new tab), the move would allow the iPhone (opens in new tab) maker to reduce its reliance on outside partners but it could also enable the company to expand its payment features beyond the US.
According to people familiar with the matter that spoke with the news outlet, the multi-year plan would bring a number of financial tasks in-house including payment processing, risk assessment for lending, fraud analysis, credit checks (opens in new tab) and other customer-service functions like handling disputes.
Since Apple is reportedly investigating the idea of launching its own hardware subscription service (opens in new tab), being able to run credit checks and risk assessments before providing customers with devices makes a great deal of sense.
Future financial products
Although Apple already offers a credit card (opens in new tab) as well as peer-to-peer payments (opens in new tab) for businesses, its efforts to develop its own payment processing technology and infrastructure will be focused on future financial products.
Back in July of last year, news broke that the company is also working on a “buy now, pay later (opens in new tab)” feature for Apple Pay Transactions that would allow customers to pay for items across four interest-free payments every two weeks or across several months with interest. While the plan with four payments is known internally as “Apple Pay in 4”, the longer term payment plans have been dubbed “Apple Pay Monthly Installments”.
> The Apple Card could be coming to more markets following new deal (opens in new tab)
> Apple Tap to Pay turns your iPhone into a contactless payments terminal (opens in new tab)
> It looks like Apple is preparing a major upgrade for its datacenters (opens in new tab)
While Apple will continue its partnership with Goldman Sachs according to Bloomberg, the company has been discussing using in-house technology for its “Apple Pay in 4” plan.
At the same time though, the company’s in-house financial services could allow it to expand future services to additional countries. Currently Apple Pay (opens in new tab) is available in over 70 countries but other services such as peer-to-peer payments, Apple Card and Apple Cash are still US-only.
The news that Apple wants to bring more of its financial services in-house also aligns with a recent job posting (opens in new tab) looking for a hardware validation engineer to help upgrade its datacenters (opens in new tab). Storing financial data and handling transactions could put a heavy load on its systems which is why the company wants to upgrade its datacenters with “next-generation” storage and server equipment from Intel and AMD.
- Accept payments on the go with one of the best mobile payment apps (opens in new tab)
Via 9to5Mac (opens in new tab)
