Pacific Crest: Apple-Visa Hookup For Mobile Payments On The Horizon?

A partnership between Apple AAPL and Visa V offering mobile payment services could be just over the horizon, according to an analyst who totted up winners and losers from the potential deal on Monday. Visa recently launched a scheme to offer payment tokens that could lower the security hurdles faced by similar past offerings. Pacific Crest's Josh Beck thinks a partnership with Apple "makes strategic sense" and could be announced later this year. The deal could reduce business obstacles and tap into Apple's affluent customer base and its rich credit-card stockpile. But for eBay EBAY, it presents the risk of heightened payment competition for its PayPal operation, and eroded investor sentiment, Beck said in a note. NXP Semiconductors NXPI could stand to gain earnings of $0.30 to $0.40 a share by providing payment software for Apple's iPhone 6. Synaptics SYNA could gain if Apple were to incorporate the company's fingerprint-sensing technology into its phones' related to the payment plan. For Apple, Beck sees "little opportunity for profits that would be meaningful at Apple's scale," although Visa's technology provides a clear path toward becoming a major player in mobile payments. Meanwhile, Google GOOGL and Amazon AMZN both stand to gain from market expansion and market-share gains, Beck said.