Apple's first step towards mobile payments?

From The Next Web:

Apple has introduced a new service that allows users to add money to their App Store, iTunes Store or iBookstore account at its physical retail stores.

No longer do you need to buy iTunes gift cards to add a balance to your iTunes account; you can now directly load it. This may not seem like a huge change, but having funds available for virtual goods isn't that far off from allowing those funds to be used to buy physical goods as well.

Mobile payments via the iPhone still isn't a guarantee or even something we'll see soon, but this is one more piece of the ecosystem that could one day power such a payment network.