The suspense is over. Apple really is planning to do something in mobile payments.

It’s been a long wait. It wasn’t enough that the Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers has filed a raft of patents relating to mobile payments in recent years. After all, the financial services community has been disappointed by Apple regarding payments again and again. NFC (near-filed communication) contactless payments never arrived, and biometric payments using TouchID on the iPhone 5S fell short.

But on yesterday’s earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook described mobile payments as “a big opportunity” for Apple:

We’re seeing that people love being able to buy content, whether it’s music or movies or books, from their iPhone, using Touch ID. It’s incredibly simple and easy and elegant, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunity there.

The mobile payments area in general is one that we’ve been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind Touch ID. But we’re not limiting ourselves just to that. So I don’t have anything specific to announce today, but you can tell by looking at the demographics of our customers and the amount of commerce that goes through iOS devices versus the competition that it’s a big opportunity on the platform.

The two most likely avenues for Apple to expand in mobile payments would be allowing the Touch ID sensor to authenticate in third-party apps, and to expand Passbook to become a full-featured mobile wallet.

Over the weekend, Jim Marous, SVP of corporate development for the marketing agency New Control, counted the ways Apple could do an end-run around banks in payments: credit cards on file, which are said to now number 600 million, app integration, experience in mobile payments, an existing mobile wallet, security chops, cloud integration, a P2P platform, merchant integration with iBeacon, links to alternative payments as indicated in patent filings, and finally, scalability.

Meanwhile, entrepreneur and blogger Tom Noyes says Apple’s plan is to make the iPhone a platform for physical retail, and that its key advantage, other than its considerable retail experience, is its ability to authenticate customers.

Cook’s remarks, while somewhat revealing, are still guarded, and the industry will have to continue to wait and see what Apple will do, but at least now it’s a question of When, not If.

Learn more about what’s next in banking at Bank Innovation 2014 on March 3-4 in Seattle. Request an invitation here.