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{"text":[[{"start":14.64,"text":"In 2019, after months of gruelling work, executives at Apple and Goldman Sachs were gearing up to unveil Apple Card, a landmark move for the iPhone maker’s burgeoning ambitions in financial services. "}],[{"start":26.12,"text":"As the launch date approached, the partners hit a sticking point. "},{"start":29.837,"text":"Apple, keen to be seen as providing unique value for customers and with a habit of grandiose marketing claims, wanted to peddle the product as the “most secure credit card ever”. "}],[{"start":39.71,"text":"Apple had leverage. "},{"start":41.364000000000004,"text":"Goldman saw the Apple Card as a pivotal product to show it could cater to Main Street customers. "},{"start":46.169,"text":"“The offering to Goldman was — ‘hey, you don’t have a consumer product and guess what? "},{"start":50.837,"text":"We can get you access to all Apple customers,’” says a former Apple executive. "},{"start":55.129000000000005,"text":"“Apple was aware so they squeezed everything they could out of that negotiation. ”"}],[{"start":59.38,"text":"But with this marketing claim, Goldman had to push back. "},{"start":62.984,"text":"“You’re open to lawsuits if you say it’s the ‘most’ anything,” says one person familiar with the discussions. "}],[{"start":69.32000000000001,"text":"In the end they settled for the more muted claim that Apple Card “provides a new level of privacy and security”, and that the absence of the 16-digit number or security code on the card itself made it “more secure than any other physical credit card”. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"
Glacial power
"}],[{"start":240.08,"text":"By design, Apple typically expands into new sectors not through flashy acquisitions but by incremental steps that give it a sustainable advantage over time. "}],[{"start":249.26000000000002,"text":"In finance, the fruits of Apple’s slow-burn strategy are clearest with Apple Pay, its wireless payment technology meant to “transform mobile payments” when it was first announced alongside the iPhone 6 in 2014. "}],[{"start":261.56,"text":"Adoption was slow enough that Apple was mocked in its first years in operation. "},{"start":265.902,"text":"By 2016 just one in 10 global iPhone owners were using Apple Pay. "},{"start":270.382,"text":"But the user base snowballed into 50 per cent by 2020, according to Deepwater Asset Management. "},{"start":275.999,"text":"By 2022, adoption hit 75 per cent and the European Commission had opened an antitrust investigation. "}],[{"start":282.96,"text":"“They move at the speed and force of a glacier,” says Gene Munster, managing partner of Deepwater. "},{"start":288.852,"text":"Commenting on Apple’s next moves in banking, he adds: “This will take five to 10 years, but by then we’ll think of Apple in the same vein as Citi, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo. ”"}],[{"start":298.93,"text":"The iPhone maker is playing a long game in finance and payments, say three former Apple employees, and its current moves are laying the technical groundwork for taking a bigger share of the market. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":309.61,"text":"For example, Apple spent years on what was known internally as Project Muirfield — the ability for the iPhone to not just send payments, but receive them. "},{"start":318.039,"text":"This feature was announced to little fanfare in February 2022: an Apple press release described that merchants using iPhones with ‘tap and go’ NFC chips could now accept payments from credit cards with “no additional hardware or payment terminal needed”. "},{"start":330.944,"text":"The service works with payment service providers including Stripe, Adyen, and Square. "}],[{"start":336.93,"text":"People familiar with the tech say the implications are far wider: if the buyer and the merchant are both using iPhones or iPads to process payments, that gives Apple the capability to create a closed-circuit that doesn’t require banking partners or networks run by Visa and Mastercard. "}],[{"start":352.08,"text":"“Right now, they can’t upset banks, and they can’t separate network partners — it’s too important for distribution at the start,” says a former Apple employee. "},{"start":360.847,"text":"“But you can imagine that the pendulum swings: as more and more people use Apple Pay . . . then the leverage moves into Apple’s camp and they can make other plays that aren’t so dependent on the banks. ”"}],[{"start":370.26,"text":"Munster adds that Apple has a long history of partnering with others until it is to their advantage to go it alone, and he suspects that is the end game in finance, too. "},{"start":379.002,"text":"“The list is long of former Apple partners who have become obsolete,” he says. "}],[{"start":384.26,"text":"Sam Shawki, chief executive of MagicCube, which offers similar tech for Android-devices, said the ability for merchants to securely accept payments through smartphones and tablets could render the entire payment device market — a $48bn sector led by Verifone and Ingenico — antiquated. "}],[{"start":400.83,"text":"“This is a fax machine in an age where you can have email,” he says of the single-use devices. "},{"start":406.159,"text":"“Taking a bite out of [payments company] Block is nothing, but taking a bite of Ingenico and Verifone is something, and taking a bite from Visa and PayPal is the long-term goal. ”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"This will take five to 10 years, but by then we’ll think of Apple in the same vein as Citi, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo
$48bnSize of the payment device market, led by Verifone and Ingenico
"}],[{"start":416.82,"text":"Michel Léger, head of innovation at Ingenico, concedes that software-based point-of-sale solutions have brought “a new era of payment acceptance”, but he argues Apple’s offering will complement physical terminals rather than replace them. "},{"start":429.212,"text":"It would be “impractical to imagine a fleet of expensive smartphones at the multilane checkout of supermarkets”, he says. "}],[{"start":436.53,"text":"Others in the industry do not see Apple as an existential threat. "},{"start":440.24699999999996,"text":"Eva Wang, a former American Express executive who now heads partnerships at Firework, a video-shopping commerce solution, says Apple’s interest in payments and banking is mostly about extending the reach of the iPhone — to add convenience but also to keep users “locked in” to the Apple ecosystem. "}],[{"start":456.54999999999995,"text":"“If I’m using all this stuff from Apple, there’s a less likely chance of me turning away (to Android),” she says. "},{"start":462.95399999999995,"text":"“What they care about is something very different from the banks. ”"}],[{"start":466.30999999999995,"text":"The big incumbents definitely need to be “cognisant” of what Apple is doing, says Boe Hartman, former technology chief of Goldman’s retail division that built the infrastructure for Apple Card. "},{"start":476.32699999999994,"text":"But he doesn’t expect to see Apple roll out the Bank of Cupertino any time soon. "}],[{"start":481.50999999999993,"text":"“Banks are rooted in constant regulation, and you have to prove that you’re living up to that regulation every day,” he says. "},{"start":487.96399999999994,"text":"“Someone like Google or Apple just wants the experience to service people, to make people more sticky in their ecosystem. "},{"start":494.14399999999995,"text":"That’s what they want. "},{"start":495.46199999999993,"text":"They don’t want to deal with the regulatory stuff. "},{"start":497.8539999999999,"text":"That’s hard and complex. ”"}],[{"start":500.42999999999995,"text":"