A report in The Wall Street Journal reveals how Apple’s plans for mobile payments were originally more ambitious than its recently released Passbook app and indicates how it might still have big plans for the market.

The company initially examined how to embed various payment methods into the iPhone or even more ambitiously to build its own payment network. Apple’s head of iPhone software Scott Forstall particularly favoured some kind of payment service, says the report.

The team working on the service considered enabling payments to be made directly from Apple to merchants, it says, but rejected the idea because it was too complex. For instance this approach would have required Apple to obtain a banking licence.

The company also considered various ways to make money from mobile payments including taking a small cut from every transaction it handled rather than adding an additional fee.

And Apple looked at various options for the wireless technology needed to handle payments including a version of Bluetooth as well as NFC. The company patented some NFC ideas “but worried whether the technology was secure enough” and was concerned about its impact on the iPhone’s battery life. Executives were also concerned about NFC’s slow adoption among retailers.

Ultimately the company opted for caution with the launch of Passbook which is an app that holds a user’s loyalty cards, coupons and tickets but not credit or debit cards. Users cannot make payments from the app.