Apple is doubling down on payments, but it may actually be about authentication.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant is expected to launch a peer-to-peer money transfer service sometime in 2016, according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal. Apple is no stranger to P2P — it filed a patent application in January 2013 for a P2P service based on iTunes accounts. Those millions of cards on file are now easily accessible via Apple Pay and TouchID, but the delivery system is more likely to be text messages, or even Apple’s own iMessage platform, according to Quartz.

It’s not known if Apple will make any money off this, but the motive is said to be increasing control over how iPhone users move their money and increasing interest in Apple Pay among millennials. The service could hook into clearXchange, already offered (and now owned through Early Warning) by many of the nation’s top banks.

Early Warning is a fraud expert, and a vote of confidence for TouchID could go a long way toward increasing use of TouchID in mobile banking. (Bank of America was rumored to be exploring TouchID in mid-2014, but the bank denied the report.) Oren Levy, founder of the payment platform Zooz, commented to Bank Innovation, “One of the key issues with P2P payments is the fraud and AML implications. Apple knows a lot about each customer and uses a fingerprint to verify the user is indeed who he says he is. [Apple] could make P2P much simpler, quicker, and most probably safer.”

It seems hard to fathom that Apple’s P2P play could approach the scale or popularity of Venmo, or Facebook Messenger. Users of iPhones have not yet adopted using their phones as payment instruments in any numbers, but when they do, Apple will be ready. But if the banks adopt TouchID, that’s even better.

Payments don’t make much money except at massive scale. The real battle going on is over identifying and authenticating customers online. Facebook, Amazon, Google, PayPal and Apple are each striving to be the gateway through which users enter the digital space and everything else follows from there.

So it might be that Apple doesn’t care about the $20 you send your friend to pay him back for drinks. It may care that you use your thumb to do it.