[roblev]

Yes, I'm sceptical too.

I think the article is mixing up banking with payment processing (payment processing is an important but small part of retail and wholesale banking).

Retail banks make most of their money by charging for loans - either individual overdrafts, personal loans or coporate loans. For apple to be a profitable bank they would have to start assessing businesses and individuals for creditworthiness. It seems quite far from their current business model and not obvious why they would want all the regulatory oversight that comes with it.

[coldtea]

>I think the article is mixing up banking with payment processing (payment processing is an important but small part of retail and wholesale banking).

Well, if not a bank something like VISA.

[prklmn]

They're better capitalized than most banks and have nearly the entire infrastructure set up for end to end payments processing, I'm proposing acquiring Square to complete their processing arm. So why not be a bank AND a payments processor? They can run the bank as a separate entity and not have the regulatory scrutiny come down on the whole company.