Apple reportedly hopes to replace your credit card with your iPhone

Apple is "very, very serious" about hiring new executives to head up a new mobile payments system, according to a report from Re/code earlier today. The company is looking to fill two new positions to lead the charge—one for a head of product and one for a head of business development. CEO Tim Cook has previously indicated Apple's interest in mobile payments, lending some weight to the rumors.

“We’re seeing that people love being able to buy content, whether it’s music or movies or books, from their iPhone, using Touch ID,” said Cook in the company's first quarter earnings call. “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.”

Apple has also reportedly been in talks with PayPal about a mobile payments system, though neither company would comment on specifics.

According to the report, Apple wants to use the nearly 600 million registered iTunes accounts and their associated credit card information to get a foothold and then build out from there. Current mobile payments systems like Google Wallet work as money aggregators, gathering credit card and loyalty card information into one place and (in theory) cutting down on the number of things you have to carry to access your funds.

In reality, banks, credit card networks, and retailers all need to get on board in order for mobile payment systems to totally replace regular cards. While Google in particular has had some success, it has also faced roadblocks in the form of competition from US cellular carriers—some of them have balked at shipping Google Wallet on their phones because they want to push Isis, a competing mobile payment system backed by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Apple has so far been able to keep the iPhone and iOS free of carrier-specific customizations and applications (with some minor exceptions). If the company's freedom from carrier meddling extends to its mobile payments system, it may have a better shot of succeeding where others have stalled.