Apple might try to make mobile payments a more prevalent feature in its devices than we thought, as online news outlet Quartz found a patent filing last month that would give iPhone users the ability to transfer funds to others through text, phone call and email. 

In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was in negotiations with banks to develop a mobile person-to-person payments service similar to PayPal's Venmo service and Square Cash. 

Here's what Quartz wrote about how Apple described the system in the patent filing: 

The patent hints at how the functionality may work. The image shows two iPhone users chatting in the iMessage app, with a payment option popping up in the top-right corner when one party asks the other to pay them back for lunch. The images also show the ability to send payments to more than one recipient, and an option to set how much money is sent. 

Apple said in the filing that the system also could work in a phone call, and with email and calendar events.