Even what there may have been in it for Green Dot to participate in Apple Cash in the US there might not be in it for banks to participate in Apple Cash elsewhere: the only fee Green Dot ever charges is for sending money from the Apple Cash card back to one’s bank account instantly using the debit card added to Wallet (otherwise it’s done free via an ach transfer that takes 1-3 business days). Outside the US, however, a bank supporting Apple Cash couldn’t charge a fee for an instant transfer to a bank account, since in most other countries there already are free instant bank to bank transfers.
Green Dot also pulls in the interchange fees whenever people use Apple Cash as a payment method through Apple Pay, but that's going to be dependent on how many people use Apple Cash that way. If folks are simply content to use it for sending and receiving money via Messages and rely on ACH transfers, Green Dot basically makes nothing at all.
There are also expenses involved, of course, not only to manage the entire thing, but also apparently merchant processing fees for accepting money with Apple Cash.
When Green Dot's CEO talked about the parntership back in 2017, he said at the time he didn't expect it to have "a material impact" on his company's financial performance, at least not in the short term.
So, with Green Dot not even making much out of the deal, I can imagine Apple is having a hard time trying to get banks in other countries to buy into it. Apple may have to become its own bank before Apple Cash can roll out internationally ?
As for the remark on Apple releasing the original iphone 10 years later outside the US, I believe it was a hypothetical example. He does have a point in Apple losing the ability to tout its services in other countries by waiting so long to release them. Don’t forget Apple makes a living out of keeping people surprised and hyped about their products and services, and time can be an enemy of that.
True, but Apple doesn't generally do this deliberately. In fact, Apple has traditionally been one of the better big tech companies when it comes to international availability of its products and services. Others like Amazon and Google acted like the rest of the world didn't exist for years, although of course they've gotten better recently.
With the iPhone, it was getting things aligned with carriers, for the most part. The original iPhone strategy worked against that, as most carriers had no interest in buying into Apple's business model, which is why Apple abandoned that with the iPhone 3G and went with subsidies and traditional carrier activations instead.
Nevertheless, Apple is still more demanding than most phone makers when it comes to the iPhone, and there were carriers that refused to carry it on Apple's terms until they simply had no other choice but to acquiesce to Apple's marketing demands or lose customers to their competitors.
Apple had the same problem with iTunes Movies and TV Shows back when those services were in their infancy. Copyright laws and licensing and distribution contracts with TV networks prevented many shows from being made available in Canada and other countries merely because of how they were written. U.S. networks had signed exclusive distribution deals with traditional broadcast networks in other countries like Canada, but those deals didn't allow those networks to sublicense that content. So, ABC/NBC/CBS couldn't sell iTunes TV Shows in Canada because they had already given the rights to Global/CBC/CTV/etc, and those Canadian broadcasters didn't have the rights to sell those on iTunes either because their contract didn't allow them to. As the contracts got renewed, things loosened up, but it's a good example of how complicated these things can get.
By comparison, Apple TV+ launched in over 100 countries on day one because Apple owned all the pieces and didn't have to fight with anybody to get permission to make it available (China being the obvious exception).
And the 10 year number isn’t too crazy: Apple Pay, for example, wasn’t released anywhere in Latin America (except Brazil) until nearly 7 years after the US initial launch. That’s way too long. And we’re still seeing launches in new countries even now, nearly 8 years after the US launch.
I don't think that's deliberate on Apple's part either — at least not directly. Apple's terms and conditions aren't palatable for many banks, so indirectly Apple may be slowing things down by being intransigent, but that doesn't mean many of the banks aren't being just as stubborn in their own way.
As I explained in an earlier post, the sole reason Apple Pay took as long as it did to even come to Canada is that the banks refused to participate until they could get it working with their own Interac system, as that's where they make most of their money from transaction fees. This had nothing to do with Apple; in fact, Apple bent over backwards to provide engineering support to assist the banks with the process, but they wouldn't authorize the use of Apple Pay with Visa and Mastercard until they had fully certified and tested Interac so it could launch at the same time. That issue is unique to Canada, of course, but banks in other countries likely have their own concerns.
The two biggest obstacles are the transaction and interchange fees for Apple Pay and the restrictions on using their own dedicated banking apps instead. Apple isn't going to give away Apple Pay for free, but some credit card companies and banks simply aren't willing to give up even a penny of their fees. Even in countries where Apple Pay launched years ago, there are still credit card companies and even individual cards that don't work with Apple Pay.
Others are simply nervous about putting their eggs in Apple's basket. The ones in this category are those who are fighting for Apple to open up the NFC hardware so third-party banking and credit card apps can handle their own payment systems — and of course collect all the fees directly without giving a cut to Apple.