Apple is preparing to expand its presence in the mobile-payment space, according to a new report.

The mobile – Payments pace is hot, with companies such as Square, PayPal and Stripe all working to make it easier for users to pay for physical goods with their iPhone's.

Apple sells billions of Dollars worth of movies, music, books and apps through iTunes. Still, aside from allowing customers at Apple Retail stores to scan and pay for physical items. inside the store via an iPhone, Apple hasn't extended its payments ecosystem outside of the digital realm.

That doesn't mean the company couldn’t instantly become a major player in the mobile-payments space overnight, thanks to its absolutely huge iTunes customer base.

Apple said in 2013 that it has 575 million iTunes accounts — most with registered Credit cards,

In June of 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that its then cache of 400 million iTunes accounts with credit cards made it "the store with the most credit cards on file anywhere in the world by far."

With features such as Passbook(introduced with iOS 6) — which allows users to store event tickets, loyalty cards and coupons on their phone — Apple is already nearly in the payments space.

Companies such as Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks allow customers to pay for their purchases using Passbook. Apple has famously avoided building NFC(near-field communication),Technology into its phones, a fact that many mobile-payment experts have attributed to the relative lack of NFC uptick across point-of- Sale systems, particularly in the United States.

One expert at Mobile World Congress 2013 that if Apple were to enter the payments space, it would instantly compel merchants of all sizes to roll out System updates.