The moment I saw Tim Cook introduce Apple Pay I thought: this is the big deal. Reassuring to learn that Dave Winer thought so too:

The way we pay for stuff today is as archaic as the way we bought music before Napster and the iPod. A few years ago, it was clear that all the big tech companies were going to become banks. What else could they possibly do with the piles of cash they were accumulating? They’re going to lend it to us, and we’re going to pay them interest. Over time, the fact that they make hardware or support customers, or have retail stores, will be interesting anachronistic sidelines. Apple, Amazon and Google investors will judge their companies on how well they work as financial institutions. It’s something investors understand, and the money you make in finance comes without the headaches of having to actually make anything.

Apple has hundreds of millions of credit card numbers, and they’ll be useful until they completely replace the banks. Apple is bigger than any of them, and has bank-sized financial resources. And the way we pay for stuff today with little plastic cards, some with chips on them, is backwards. The chips in our phones are much more capable. And putting them on our wrist in a big form factor isn’t interesting. They will be embedded in our keychain next, and then in our actual bodies. It won’t be much longer before we are at least part computer.

Anyway, Apple will be a much better bank than BofA, Citibank or Chase. Consumers will have more rights from Apple than we were given by the bankers and their Washington cronies. Apple still is a fucked up mega-corporation, but they don’t have any reason not to treat us a little better than the guys they’re replacing. It’ll make for the feel-good Christmas commercial, this year and every year from now on.

Apple is simply doing the obvious thing: following the money.