So one of the forecasts in my book Bank To The Future was the move of Apple into financial services and some real customer focused innovation.
We have already trusted millions of our credit card details to Apple by allowing them to store our details on iTunes so we can buy music, films, apps and more with a couple of clicks. Soon we will be able to tap our iPhones on point-of-sale terminals in most retailers in the world and buy anything.
Google Wallet is wresting with a few issues right now. Who will be a major player in financial services soon? My crystal ball?
Apple will launch perfectly and take the market by storm.
So here is the future...
We all hate banks and don't want to deal with them or speak to them ... so they will sit quietly in the background with their 30 year old monopolistic infastructure designed at deliberately keeping an outdated payment system so they can hold onto their payments monopoly and keep payments hard for the sake of fees.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Square, Facebook, Twitter and PayPal will do all the innovation and build on top of the outdated banking system to offer innovation and breakthrough technology so we can make and take payments safely and easily from anywhere in the world.
BankToTheFuture.com intends on leveraging all this innovation in order to make sure that money does not simply make it easier for us to buy consumer products, but that it is easy to get that money in the hands of great entrepreneurs and businesses in the form of investment capital.
We live in exciting times!
I can't wait for Apple to enter the jungle -- it's just a shame that all this innovation needs to be built on old banking technology so the banks get their cut.
Here is some more on iWallet:
On March 6, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent for a new technology called "iWallet," which is a digital platform that gives the user complete control over their subsidiary financial accounts directly on their iPhone, and also leverages Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology to complete credit card transactions on the phone as well. On Tuesday, more patents were granted to Apple in relation to the iWallet technology, including security measures that aim to keep financial information safe, and the app in iTunes that will house these features. In all likelihood, this is Apple's mobile payments solution intended for its next-generation iPhone, presumably called "iPhone 5."
Apple breaks down the iWallet like this: Credit card transactions happen all the time, whether or not the cardholder is present. There's a lesser chance of fraud when the cardholder is present, but unfortunately, the cardholder can't be present all the time. Apple's solution, the iWallet, aims to provide real-time authorization for transactions where the cardholder is not present, or remote. However, unlike transactions over the Internet, Apple promises its service to be highly secure and reliable.