Apple Shouldn’t Reinvent the Wheel in Financial Services

Sometimes it seems that the top executives of big tech companies are deliberately taunting antitrust regulators around the world. Bloomberg’s scoop today that Apple is “developing its own payment processing technology” is sure to intensify questions at the European Commission and the U.S. Justice Department about whether the iPhone maker is using its dominance of the mobile market to expand into adjacent businesses. That wouldn’t matter if reinventing the wheel in financial services made sense for Apple. But it doesn’t.

What’s the advantage for Apple in developing its own expertise in “risk assessment for lending, fraud analysis, credit checks,” as Bloomberg reports Apple is planning? Those are all areas that benefit from data on a massive scale. As big as Apple is in the selling of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks, surely banks and credit card companies are more expert in finance. Apple’s looking like a company that has lost its focus.