Report: Apple, AmEx Team for iPhone 6 Mobile Payments

The Apple rumor mill continues as we get closer and closer to the company's Sept. 9 event.

According to Re/code, Apple has finalized a deal with American Express a part of is rumored new mobile payments platform. The end goal is to allow iPhone 6 owners to pay for goods and services using their phones, eliminating the need for credit cards, debit cards, or cash at certain retailers.

Of course, that does depend on which payment services Apple has signed up. It's also unclear just which retailers have agreed to participate in Apple's plans—we presume they would need some kind of technology to be able to extract the payment information from a smartphone.

Nevertheless, it' another major partnership for Apple. The Information previously reported that Apple had successfully courted Visa as well. And it's widely rumored, though not confirmed, that Apple will indeed use NFC as the basis for its mobile payments. We can only presume that, somehow, Apple will also make use of a fingerprint verification system built into the phone itself for payments—assuming Apple is continuing to employ Touch ID in the next iteration of iPhones.

It's certainly possible that Apple might scuttle the entire feature for its big Sept. 9 reveal—or perhaps postpone its announcement until more partners have signed up.

Still, it's been speculated that Apple has been very interested in somehow getting more use out of the millions of credit card records it currently has via iTunes. Allowing iPhone owners to make use of that data in new and interesting ways seems like a natural evolution.

More importantly, having Google and Apple finally playing in the same mobile payments space might bring some much-needed competition and attract the interest of even more retailers. For phone owners, that's a good thing—especially if you dream of a wallet-free future.