By now it’s patently clear that Apple wants a chunk of the mobile payments industry. And it’s muscling its way into the crowd with some serious support.
Bank Innovation is reporting that Apple has inked deals to lower its card transaction fees with many of the nation’s top financial institutions, including American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One, and Bank of America.
If the rumor mill is right, Apple should have no problem leveraging these deals into a prime placement at the center of the mobile payments world.
So why are the big banks playing ball and offering Apple such a sweet deal?
“Banks offered the discounted fee for two reasons: for the Apple payments platform to accept all of the cards from the issuers, and for Apple to assume some of the liability by including two secure elements that will authenticate transactions — location data via the NFC chip, and biometric security,” the report explains. “This is essentially a wash for the financial services industry: they lowered fees for Apple for the privilege of being included in Apple’s payments initiative, but managed to put some of the transaction risk to Apple.”
