The suspense is over. Apple really is planning to do something in mobile payments. It’s been a long wait. It wasn’t enough that the Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers has filed a raft of patents relating to mobile payments in recent years. After all, the financial services community has been disappointed by Apple regarding payments again and again. NFC (near-filed communication) contactless payments never arrived, and biometric payments using TouchID on the iPhone 5S fell short. But on yesterday’s earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook described mobile payments as “a big opportunity” for Apple: We’re seeing that people love being able to buy content, whether it’s music or movies or books, from their iPhone, using Touch ID. It’s incredibly simple and easy and elegant, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunity there. The mobile payments area in general is one that we’ve been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind Touch ID. But we’re not limiting ourselves just to that. So I don’t have anything specific to announce today, but you can tell by looking at the demographics of our customers and the amount of commerce that goes through iOS devices versus [...]
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