Apple looking to hire e-currency experts, eyes 'serious' move into mobile payments

Reports suggest iPhone and iPad maker wants to move into mobile payments business.

Apple has ‘serious' ambitions about developing its own mobile payment business, with the company behind the iPhone and iPad reportedly well on its way to hiring experts in the field.

According to anonymous sources cited by Re/Code, Apple has plans to build on the hundreds of millions of credit card details it has stored up over the years thanks to the success of its App Store, which has seen billions of applications downloaded to its smartphone and tablet devices.

Apple's head of e-commerce Jennifer Baily is said to be interviewing candidates for senior mobile payment positions as she looks to expand the Cupertino firm into that increasingly active arena. Apple is said to be hiring for two positions, head of product and head of business development, both of which will concentrate on a digital payment service.

"Their ambitions are very, very serious," an anonymous source told Re/Code on the subject of Apple adding a mobile payment service to its product stable.

Indeed, during Apple's last earnings call, CEO Tim Cook suggested that mobile payments were an area the company is interested in looking into.

"The mobile payments area in general is one that we've been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind the Touch ID. But we're not limiting ourselves just to that," he said.

The reports that Apple is looking into providing its own digital wallet - rather than relying on a bank - come just over a week after it was revealed social network Facebook is looking to introduce a mobile payments service. Facebook's potential move into mobile payments has widely been seen as an effort to move into emerging markets and to attract new customers.

That, however, is unlikely to be the case with Apple. Given that it does not have much presence in the developing world - iPhones and iPads are expensive products after all - Apple seems to be looking to expand on the markets it already has by leveraging its existing customer data.