Too much payments Kool-Aid, everyone!

How does Apple make by far the most of their money? Hardware. That's a really high margin business, something one can't say about payments.

So all the scribbling and quibbling over Uncle Carl and his payments numbers is worth less than 15 bps, because Apple IMHO doesn't really care about payments-- note how they emphasize they don't even see the payment data--they care about making their hardware more useful and thus desirable, so they can sell more of it.

Those who read this site (and I am one) must realize just because it is central to us, payments is not central to everything.

And by the way, EMV will move the to 10-20% of merchants over the next 3-5 years, but it'll be far longer before the majority of card-accepting merchants have EMV-enabled equipment. The liability shift doesn't mean that much to, say, a drugstore or grocery store.