Apple’s new iPhone spells the end for high-street banking

Mobile banking poses a grave threat to the traditional high-street banks, says Matthew Lynn.

When Apple's new iPhones were launched earlier this week, there was the usual hype and hoopla. The Apple fans were predictably wowed by the bigger screen sizes and the whizzy new functions the designers have come up with, while the Android groupies just as predictably dismissed it as old hat.

But the new phones' biggest impact might not be on the mobile telecoms or technology industries, but on something far older, and more prosaic: banking. You see, Apple also announced a new payments service this week, Apple Pay. And this service will be available on both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.