Apple has made several feints toward becoming a full-fledged payments company in the past, and the signs keep piling up. Perhaps most telling is the Motley Fool report today that “Apple is looking for a Payments Software Engineer that will ‘help build a next generation payment platform.’” Rumors have swirled for years that Apple intends to leverage its more than 575 million cards on file in iTunes into a wider payments platform. It is already a simple matter for iTunes customers to quickly purchase access to media with a single click, and in the case of the iPhone 5S, a mere touch of the thumbprint. Technically, iTunes is a payments platform, just one with limited functionality. Within the last month, Apple has filed patent applications for paying with a wave of the iPhone, as well as entering coupons and scanning QR codes with Passbook. Rumors have also swirled about Apple building applications to allow for payments with the iWatch, and a person-to-person payments platform built around iTunes. But the real elephant in the room is Apple’s long-expected iWallet mobile wallet, which will either incorporate Passbook as it now stands or vice versa. New patents were filed for iWallet in late November for reading QR [...]
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