Crazy Rumor Tuesday: Apple to Turn iTunes Accounts into Paypal Competitor?!
Crazy rumor of the day, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider, has Apple considering turning iTunes accounts into a Paypal competitor. Though they’re careful to classify it as gossip and not confirmed news (heh), it’s not beyond imagination that someone, somewhere, wanted to gauge a little public reaction to this idea.
Now, TiPb has given Microsoft a lot of negative feedback for losing focus and getting into areas they have no business getting into (pun intended). So, we have to do the same for Apple.
Does iTunes need to become a Paypal competitor? No doubt someone has to, given the more onerous sides of Paypal and the lack of Google Check Out, and still vaporish Pay with Facebook making eBay sweat enough to straighten up and behave properly, but Apple?
The link above suggests maybe Apple is interested in using the iPhone platform itself as a real-world payment system (they’ve only been doing that outside North America for years, after all), or they wish to diversify a la General Electric and this may be an easy and logical way to do it.
If it’s the former, and it works with typical Apple magic, then yes please and now. If it’s the latter then Apple should likely remember that focus, not diversification, has led them to tremendous success so far, even as their competition has floundered.
What do you think?
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August 4th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Actually this is a GREAT Rumor.. i would LOVE to see something destroy paypal… Paypal is HORRIBLE.. Absolutly HORRIBLE… you get no Customer support.. terrible service.. you can get Scammed easily and have to wait a whole month for a response only to find out you got scammed deal with it. etc etc.. there is even a website devoted to how much paypal sucks.
I think if Apple stepped into this you could very well see something with some good customer support which would be a FIRST in the market.
Even GoogleCheckout doesn’t have a number you can call to speak to a human being. you have to wait days for an email response if that.
Maybe apple would do this, and do it better.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I voted for “No. Apple could compete, but it’s not their core business.” Seriously apple, learn what needs to be done an what should be left alone!
Also, FIRST!
August 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I was looking for the option to vote “NO I do not need Apple censoring my purchases”.
Seriously, this is not a hard thing to set up, since Apple already has automated credit card purchases. All they need is the ability to charge sender’s card and credit recipient’s account and then (optionally) issue a credit card deposit to recipient.
The hard part comes with the dispute resolution and the policing.
August 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
No I don’t think so. I only use paypal for eBay and iTunes for well iTunes.
August 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Considering that Apple uses Paypal for payment as well as credit card, wouldn’t that be redundant?
August 4th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
@iphonemilk
Couldn’t agree more. Paypal needs taking down a peg or two.
Electronic payment by handheld device seems like a logical next step for the iPhone to me.
August 4th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
PayPal definitely needs competition, but Apple would have to improve its customer service, refund, and dispute handling abilities by several orders of magnitude before they can provide it. (See the issues surrounding GV refunds, which I assume tipb will post about eventually.)
August 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I trust iTunes far more than I trust Paypal.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Or you could post a link…..
August 4th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
@Frog:
Why do you have any issues trusting PayPal?
I’ve done business over paypal and never had a problem, sending or receiving. I much prefer it to sending a credit card to an unknown company for a one time purchase.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
@icebike
I would love to, but 4 times now I have tried to post the link, and the post has not “taken” — whether or not it is stuck in some review queue or just denied, I have no idea. It was posted on maclife-dot-com July 31st.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Hmm…that one showed up. Perhaps maclife-dot-com, when in domain form, is disallowed?
August 4th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Ok, I see the problem Fassy. This board has a lot of problems with Under Scores in Links. (As does the main blog).
So If you find the article, copy its url and paste it into tinyurl.com and then copy and paste the tiny url into the board.
I’ve had this problem before as well.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I presume you mean this article:
http://tinyurl.com/m2nbxr
“Apple made it impossible for our customers to receive the fixes, updates, and support by pulling the app. We were fulfilling our end of the bargain. Why should those refunds come out of our pocket?” says Duerr. “The refund issue and lack of respect for our mutual customers has further soured us on the belief that Apple cares at all about their developers … other than the dollars they bring in.”
August 4th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Yes indeed. The most interesting thing about the refunds is the question of what happens to Apple’s 30% commission. An earlier TechCrunch article notes Apple reserves the right to keep its full commission, so the developer would refund $10 for every $7 they originally earned. This would seem doubly unfair in this case, and, I would hope that at a minimum, Apple would not exercise that option in this case.
http://bit.ly/FvOxL
(I had not known about the underscore issue — thanks for the tip about using a url shortener.)
August 4th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
LOL
iPal?
August 4th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Dunno icebike. Had a few problems with both iTunes and Paypal. Paypal problems never got resolved. iTunes problems got resolved within 24 hours, and even had some goodwill credits. If I could use my iTunes account to pay for something online, I’d be keen to do that other Paypal or my credit car directly!