I’ve thought for a few years that financial services is the next big market for Apple (see my posts). It’s a massive market that the iPhone puts the company in prime position to disrupt.

Today I watched a Wall Street Journal video about the competition between Apple and traditional banks. The gist was that Apple’s digital wallet is gaining market share for consumer payments. That is, consumers are using this digital wallet to make more of their purchases. Banks have taken notice and worked together to create a competing wallet called Paze. Paze is young and there isn’t a ton of information about it out yet, but I’m curious to see how banks plan to convince consumers to adopt Paze. Distribution (getting the solution in the hands of users) matters, and it’s not clear to me how Paze will compete with the distribution Apple offers via the iPhone.

The stakes are high, and it will be interesting to see how this war plays out. Regardless, I like the fact that Apple’s presence is forcing banks to innovate and offer better solutions to consumers and small businesses.