Apple money-transfer service reportedly in the works

Apple has reportedly met with industry partners about launching a payment sharing service similar to Venmo, “sources familiar with the talks” told Recode. The service is said to allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to one another.

Recode says that one source in particular stated that it expects Apple to announce this new service later in 2017, while another source apparently noted that there may not be a set announcement and launch date.

Should this come to fruition, the reported Apple service would see competition from the likes of major U.S. banks and PayPal, which owns Venmo. It’s no slouch in this area, either, with Venmo registering $17.6 billion USD in volume last year.

Sources told Recode that Apple also recently held discussions with Visa about creating its own pre-paid cards that would be connected to the payment sharing service. These Apple cards are said to run on the Visa debit network and would allow people to spend money sent to them through the new service, rather than waiting for the money to be deposited into their bank accounts.