Swipe & Tap: Apple’s Future as a Financial Services Company

What the growing Apple Pay ecosystem tells us about Apple’s ambitions beyond consumer tech products

For a couple of years, it has been an accepted reality that the smartphone market is a mature one. As a result, companies have been looking to expand their portfolios beyond the smartphone. Perhaps there is no company more important to watch in this sense than Apple. The iPhone is the lifeblood of Apple, still accounting for 50% of the company’s revenue. There have been many theories about what is next for Apple. Maybe they will finally dive into the mixed reality world with the long-rumored Apple AR glasses? Or maybe compete with Tesla in the even longer rumored Apple Car. Let me present another possibility: Apple is trying to become a financial services company.

A Game of Optics

You may be wondering, why would Apple think of itself as a financial services company? Apple is a company that has recognized that the road to profitability in the modern consumer tech environment is through recurring revenue. This realization is evident through the launch and support of services such as Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple One. The logical next step for a company as aspirational as Apple is to then control where the money that is spent on these services is stored and moved.

One of the most important things to possess when becoming a financial services company is to have trust and equity built up. Most people will not want to store their money with a company that they feel has a checkered or suspect past. Among tech companies, Apple still has an overwhelming amount of brand equity and trust in an environment that has grown more questioning of tech companies. Apple enjoys a level of prestige reputation that companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google might not. The general view of Apple as a company is that of an American success story where its late founder, Steve Jobs is revered as a sort of modern-day prophet. If any tech company was going to be successful with a pivot towards finance, Apple is that company.