It has emerged that Britain’s top banks and Apple Inc. are in talks to launch Apple Pay in London in the first half of 2015. Rumors started that Apple was expanding their Apple Pay team into London when a job posting was spotted for a payment specialist position in London.

According to the Telegraph, negotiations are apparently underway with at least one top London bank; however, all has not been going smoothly. The banks biggest concern is the large amount of their customer’s financial and personal information that Apple would want to access.

However when Apple Pay was introduced in September, Apple was unwavering regarding their approach to collecting data from users. Apple executive Eddy Cue said, “We are not in the business of collecting your data. So when you go to a physical business and use Apple Pay, Apple doesn’t know what you bought, where you bought it, or how much you paid for it. The transaction is between you, the merchant, and your bank”.

The Telegraph has also reported that some of the bank executives fear that Apple Pay could serve as Apple’s beachhead into the banking industry. This fear closely resembles a similar conclusion reported by McKinsey Company, in their article entitled The digital battle that banks must win. The article states that, “For now, the payments business remains squarely within the core bank franchise, but attackers such as Google, Apple, and PayPal threaten critical sources of revenue”.

Apple Pay is competing with the likes of Google and PayPal; however, it is Apple’s mobile payment system which has enjoyed early success over its competitors. Having only launched the system on October 20, Apple Pay accounted for 1 percent of all digital payment dollars for the month of November.

Given Apple’s  successful festive season with 51.3 percent of mobile device activations, and the Apple Watch due to launch soon, this figure is only likely to rise.

Image via Apple Inc.