An article published on Seeking Alpha has suggested a great way Apple could start burning a hole in the $98 billion cash pile they have accumulated: setting up an Apple credit card, or an ‘Applecard’.
Here’s an extract from the article explaining how this brilliant looking system would work:
Using RFID chips attached to individual consumer product packages, your iPhone will wirelessly recognize each item in your grocery cart. Your iPhone will list each to-be-purchased item and display your invoice on the iPhone screen complete with a total tally and via its NFC chip will transfer the invoice total to the retail store’s computer, charging the bill to your credit card after the authorization is made. Visa is already working with smartphones to do this.
[…]
…after experiencing and perfecting the system in its own retail stores using your iTunes account credit card for payment, it makes sense for Apple to issue its own iPhone-enabled credit card to hundreds of millions of iTunes customers.
Apple’s $100 billion cash could thus be used to pay Apple and all vendors other than Apple, just like banks now use their money to pay vendors with plastic credit cards. Apple could stimulate acceptance, distribution and use of its own credit cards by offering Apple product buyers a 1-2% discount if their Apple purchase is made using an AppleCard and also waving an annual fee for customers who spend at least $500 in an Apple store each year.
It sounds like a pretty awesome idea. It’s worth reading the full article to get a complete explanation, but this could also make Apple a whole lot richer. Then again, they could just partner with an already established bank to do basically the same thing…
