Apple Inc. is planning to develop a mobile payments system for physical goods and services, a system which would allow them to compete with current payment systems like Isis and Google Wallet.

The idea of paying through one's phone for goods is a new one in the United States, but many countries like Japan already have done away with cash or even credit and debit transactions. Instead, a person's bank is directly accessed through their mobile phone, something everyone keeps on them at all times.

Eddy Cue, who is the Apple's senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services -- and chief of iTunes -- met with industry executives to talk about expanding the payments system built around iTunes to cove buying items at retail locations. This would allow Apple to enter the growing market of mobile payments currently controlled by Paypal, Square, and Google among others. Over $90 billion will exchange hands through these services in just a few years' time.

Apple is uniquely positioned to become a service provider in the mobile payments marketplace because of all the things it already has in place. It has over 600 million Apple IDs on file for all its users, which are already linked to a credit card. This is more users than both Paypal and Amazon. Apply could also use the fingerprint sensor on the new iPhone 5S as security for smartphone payers.

"Apple could introduce a next generation payments solution," said investor Carl Icahn. "With the fingerprint sensor, iBeacon, 575+ million credit card numbers stored in iTunes, and Apple's homogeneous iOS installed base with 79% of devices using iOS 7, we believe a revolutionary payments solution is now a very real opportunity that the company could choose to pursue."

"Apple is absolutely the sleeping giant in the payments world," an analyst at Forrester Research said. "They have the capability; they just haven't tied it all together." Perhaps this will reverse the decline in Apple's stock value in the long-term.