Apple is in talks with banks in the US about creating its own mobile-to-mobile payments service that sounds a lot like PayPal’s Venmo app, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Robin Sidel.
PayPal stock was down 1.5% in wake of the news.
The app would reportedly let people send payments to each other directly from their phones, and automatically take them out of their checking accounts on the back end.
While Apple already has its own payments system thanks to Apple Pay, the service so far has been mobile-to-merchant, and the mobile-to-mobile space has largely been dominated by PayPal’s Venmo app, which allows for quick and easy payments.
Facebook’s Messenger app, Snapchat, and Jack Dorsey’s Square have also introduced mobile-to-mobile payments within their apps.
According to The WSJ, Apple has been talking to a host of banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One, and US Bancorp.
The talks are still happening, and there isn’t any clear launch date for the service, though it could come as soon as next year.
The mobile-payments space is becoming crowded, and an entrance by Apple should worry PayPal, since Venmo has grown popular in the US.
Apple Pay already makes it easy to pay merchants using your iPhone or Apple Watch without rummaging into your wallet. If Apple could fold a mobile-to-mobile payments service into Apple Pay while keeping it easy to use, it’s easy to see how consumers could be tempted away from third-party apps like Venmo or Square.
As reported by Business Insider