You can send money using Apple Pay, but most of these free money transfer applications are free because they’re using ACH, so they “need” access to the bank acc

You can send money using Apple Pay, but most of these free money transfer applications are free because they’re using ACH, so they “need” access to the bank account to see if the underlying funds are there. If they transact like a credit card processor, there are fees. This is setup so that you can run an existing merchant app (launching with Stripe) and collect money with all of the same fee requirements as using stripe normally.