Not a whole lot of insight here by Forbes, but this bit rings true:

If Apple likes to disrupt huge, inefficient markets, why not get into the mobile payments space?

[J]ust shaving off the credit card companies’ fees on Apple retail stores could save Apple $3 billion in revenues.

One year ago Apple announced 200 million iTunes accounts. Just about everyone I know has one. You can already “gift” someone with iTunes credit. All you need is a cleaner interface to send it and a linked account to get money out.