Tim Cook Says Apple Pay Won’t Have Cryptocurrency Features Anytime Soon

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. chief executive officer Tim Cook said the company is looking at cryptocurrency features, but did not elaborate on what that might entail.

Cook made the comments Tuesday at The New York Times DealBook conference. Cook said while the company had no immediate plans to enable crypto functionality in Apple Pay, “There are other things that we are definitely looking at.”

Cook revealed that he personally invests in cryptocurrency, but that he has no plans to invest Apple’s cash in the asset. “I don’t think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto,” he said. Nor does Apple have any immediate plans to accept cryptocurrency for its products. He also called NFTs -- non-fungible tokens -- an “interesting” part of crypto.

In the payments world, Apple is considered by some to be a laggard in implementing cryptocurrency support. Square Inc., PayPal Inc. and its popular Venmo service all support various crypto features, while Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. have both shown willingness to accept the currency in the future. Earlier this year, Tesla Inc. briefly accepted crypto as a payment method for its cars.

During the conference, Cook also defended Apple’s App Store commission rate, saying most developers are charged a 15% cut instead of the full 30%. He did say however that more changes to the App Store will come in the future. He also said that users who want to side-load -- install apps from the web or elsewhere instead of via the App Store -- can buy an Android device instead of an iPhone. 

Asked about Meta Platforms Inc. and its metaverse push, Cook said augmented reality remains a core technology for Apple. The company plans to unveil its own mixed reality headset as early as next year, Bloomberg News has reported. 

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