In reply to WarumNicht.

I apologise for the verbosity, but, I was principally responding to the nonsensical question in this article, is Amazon’s Fire a threat to payments? And, as noted, I have seen this same nonsensical question put regarding Apple being a potential threat to MasterCard/Visa, eg …

http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/06/04/are-mastercard-and-visa-in-apples-crosshairs/

Whether the retailers like it or not, in the interests of all stakeholders’, Chip+PIN (+optional NFC) is the form of security that is set to be mandated by the retail banks and their major “bankcard” partners for their physical point of sale payments system.

You suggest that for Apple it’s only about hardware. What then can Apple’s—or Amazon’s—hardware add to this mix that could possibly threaten the MasterCard/Visa payments system?

Regardless, only the “bankcards” have dynamic access to funds/credit in the retail banks; all the other payments pretenders, whether hardware or software, or very large retailers themselves, can only ever be parasitic middlemen riding, somewhat precariously, on the backs of the retail banks’ systems …