It looks like Apple has its sights set on dominating the payment business. According to The Wall Street Journal, the tech giant has been meeting with several major US banks to discuss the possibility of developing a peer-to-peer payment system that would allow users to 'zap' money to one another with their smartphones.
JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bancorp are among the banks speaking with Apple, says the WSJ.
Following this news stock in Paypal, the current leader in the online payment game, dropped 1.8 percent. The company already has a similar service to the one Apple is proposing called Venmo.
Apple has been upping their efforts in the payment industry recently. At the Code Mobile Conference held in California last month, Apple VP Jennifer Bailey announced that the company was expanding support for its current payment system, Apple Pay, to even more retailers.
Starbucks, Best Buy, KFC and Chili's were among the big names mentioned.
In January, CEO Tim Cook proclaimed that 2015 will be 'the year of Apple Pay.'
Expanding the service with a peer-to-peer option would certainly be interesting proposition for Apple at this point.
PayPal however, doesn't seem too worried for the mean time. A spokesperson told the Journal, "We welcome any development that encourages people to address the awkwardness of dealing with cash when paying friends or family back. We have multiple services to make that easy including both PayPal and Venmo. Our services work across multiple devices and Operating Systems, as well as online."
Given the scores of people who own an apple device, a P2P Apple Pay might be a very competitive product. Whether or not the banks decide to play ball with Apple remains to be seen.
