Competition between different mobile pay systems on offer in Switzerland is heating up: Apple Pay has recently been registered and is poised to pick a fight with rival solutions, research by finews.ch showed.
Paymit and Twint, the two main mobile pay systems in Switzerland have been joined by a third party – the tech giant from Silicon Valley has registered the brand Apple Pay in Switzerland, effective at the end of February.
Fintech entrepreneur Marc P. Bernegger tweeted the news yesterday. In the register of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, the Apple Pay brand is hidden, because the company chose to activate the brand label only, presumably in a bid not to alert its competitors.
The plans of Apple can only be guessed about. The entry for Apple Pay lists a wide range of possible services in the registry, referring to various financial service instruments.
Complete Range of Services
Apple Pay clearly targets a broader spectrum of services than Paymit and Twint. They are concentrating on payment solutions at checkouts and from transfers. By contrast, Apple also seems to aim at banking in a broader sense. As such, Apple Pay is the basis for a complete range of financial services.
In the U.S., Apple seems to target personal finance management with an aim to attract individualized advertising for mobile devices.
Peer-to-Peer Payments
The piece of information with the most potential to unsettle rivals is the possibility to use Apple Pay for peer-to-peer payments. Apple has been rather successful in establishing mobile pay solutions. The entry-level offer, which allows checkout payments has established itself as the best in the market.
A decisive moment for the success of the payment solutions is the penetration of each market with mobile phones made by Apple. Switzerland is destined to be a prime market for the U.S. player, as more than 50 percent of the market remain in the hands of Apple.
