Apple Card Won’t Support Multiple Users, No Cost Associated With Physical Card

[tmiw]

Why would a merchant in a competitive market not lower prices when costs were reduced, all other things equal?

Your comment makes me worry that people think the cash-back reward is somehow free money...

I mean, people are already used to paying $x for y. Businesses are going to want as much revenue/profit as they can get away with.

(Also, it's very possible their merchant processors will just eat most of the savings anyway. That might have been what happened with most merchants after the Durbin Amendment passed to cap debit card interchange, as 57% had no change in their costs.)

 

[C DM]

Can you imagine Steve Jobs going on stage and releasing an Apple Credit Card? He’s probably rolling in his Cupertino grave.

“This is a day I’ve been waiting for two and a half years. Today, Apple reinvents debt....and this is what it looks like”:

Considering the kinds of things people were saying about the iPod when it was introduced...

 

[fairuz]

There is not, however, support for single-use numbers

Wake me up when they have this. This is all you need.

 

[nagelixin]

I’m hoping for Apple Cash to become available here in Australia. Given Apple Pay is available at 99% of locations surely this market is ripe for them to expand here with Apple Card and Apple Cash.

 

[Analog Kid]

That is cash "back", as in in you get cash back, based on your spends. How does giving you money become a cost? The only cost I can see is the APR rate if you don't clear the monthly balance on your card.

I didn't think that was a controversial statement, but reading how people think about credit cards is kinda freaking me out... Cash back isn't mana from heaven, it's a delayed discount. Less of a discount means it costs more. To wit:

If you buy something for $100 with Apple Pay, you get 2% back. It costs you $98.
If you buy something for $100 with the physical card, you get 1% back. It costs you $99.

The physical card costs you 1% of purchases.

One benefit of Apple's "Daily Cash" approach is that there is less of a delay in receiving the discount. With monthly cash back, the bank earns the interest on that money for an average of 15 days. If you're holding a balance, they're earning something like 20% interest on it (much less if you don't hold a balance but even if they put it into Treasuries they're getting more than the 2% they're giving you). Apple is forgoing most of that interest...

 

[dontwalkhand]

So you can't "share accounts" meaning married couples can't have authorized users so that they can both keep track of finances?

That's kind of dumb...

No, they of course would rather you just send the spouse money through Apple Pay cash or even better, have their own card so it’s double the accounts!
[doublepost=1553838770][/doublepost]

I wonder if we’ll have an online account with Goldman Sachs? If we want to increase the credit limit, what will we do?

I wonder how their fraud protection will be too.

Do I notify Apple or Goldman that I’ll be traveling or that I’m going to be spending a large amount of money.

Many questions.

You’ll notify Apple through business chat as shown.
[doublepost=1553839147][/doublepost]

Exactly.

Since it's a personal card and does not support sharing, it should be named:
iCard

iCards were already something else in iPhoto, to make greeting cards.

 

[Grey Area]

Sure, but sharpen that baby down a little, and you've got yourself one hell of a knife!

Heh, I'm pretty sure this will actually happen. Titanium knives in the CC format are already a thing:

I bet enterprising knifemakers will soon be offering aftermarket customizations, grinding edges and bottle openers into Apple Cards.

Fun at airport security checks, too.

 

[Don1985]

Apple this summer will introduce the Apple Card, a new credit card that it's offering in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Apple presented the Apple Card at its March 25 event and launched an Apple Card website, but there were still many questions about how it will work.

TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino today shared some new details on the Apple Card that were provided by Apple, giving a little more insight into how it will work and answering a few of the questions we saw from MacRumors readers.

First and foremost, Apple Card is not going to support multiple users. People who use a single account with two shared credit cards at the current time are not going to be able to do the same thing with Apple Card. It's one card per person and one card per account.

There is no cost associated with the physical Apple Card, even though it's made of laser-etched titanium. Apple isn't going to charge you for the card itself and there isn't going to be a penalty fee if you lose it and need a replacement. There is an in-app option to freeze your card in the event that it's stolen.

Speaking of the physical Apple Card, Apple has implemented a neat activation method - you'll just tap it against the iPhone when you get it, without the need to place a phone call for activation like you have to do with existing credit and debit cards. When using the physical card, no signatures will be required.

Though it's tap to activate, the physical card itself isn't going to support contactless payments. You need your iPhone for that.

Paying your balance can be done in the Wallet app using a linked bank account or Apple Pay Cash, and while not mentioned by TechCrunch, there is an option with Apple Pay Cash to get an emailed statement, so Apple will presumably offer the same option with Apple Card. There's no word on whether transactions can be imported into financial software like Quicken as of yet.

As for fees, there are no foreign transaction fees but the exchange rate for foreign transactions is determined by Mastercard. Making a late payment will not result in penalty rates, aka increased interest rates. You're still going to have to pay interest on the outstanding balance, and a late payment will impact credit score, but interest rates won't increase.

TechCrunch says that when it comes to interest rates, Apple will make an effort to sign you up at the lower end of the interest rate tier that you qualify for.As Apple announced on Monday, there are no credit card numbers or other information on the physical titanium Apple Card. This data is instead available in the app, leaving some questions about online purchases where you often need a number and a CVV.

Apple Card is able to generate virtual card numbers for these kinds of purchases. The Wallet app will provide a virtual card number and a virtual confirmation code, with the number being semi-permanent and able to be regenerated whenever you want. This info can be used for non-Apple Pay online purchases, over-the-phone purchases, and other similar situations.

There is not, however, support for single-use numbers or single-merchant numbers for having separate card numbers for different merchants. Purchases will be further protected by a one-time use dynamic security code, and two-factor authentication will need to be turned on for you to use Apple Card.

When it comes to privacy, Apple said on stage that it won't know what you're buying or how much you spent, and its partner, Goldman Sachs, will not be selling or using data for external or internal marketing or advertising.

There's one other neat tidbit about Apple Card that's worth pointing out, which, while wasn't included in TechCrunch's details, has been circulating on Twitter. Apple Card uses different colors to categorize and code your purchases for labeling purposes, with entertainment in pink, food in orange, shopping in yellow, and so on.

It appears that when you use Apple Pay, the color of your card in the Wallet app will have a rainbow gradient based on your spending habits, so if you're buying a lot of food and purchasing a lot of movie tickets, it'll trend toward orange and pink.

​

TechCrunch has some additional details on privacy and security that are well worth reading through for those interested in the Apple Card, and our own Apple Card guide also has more information on what you can expect when it launches.

Article Link: Apple Card Won't Support Multiple Users, No Cost Associated With Physical Card

My credit card will end up all orange!

 

[robotsluvblood]

As a 40-something who has NEVER used a credit card (only debit cards), and has never used credit at all - i buy everything outright from cars to houses - I literally have no credit history (no student loan, no mortgage. Even though I make 400k+ a year I can't get a simple entry credit card as I'm 'not in the system'. I went to Experian and Transunion earlier this year as I wanted to get a secured-card that offered cash-back or miles - and neither could provide me with a credit report as I was 'not on file'.. I spend over 10k a year on Apple products, and have a long history of this. I wonder if your relationship with Apple will have any bearing on getting a card - or if it's simply a credit worthiness call by GS - in which case I'm SOL.

 

[rikscha]

You do realise you somewhat have forgotten about the implication this has on price. high Cash back rates just for the sake of it doesn’t make sense.

Merchants need to make money, what do you think who picks up the tab when they have increased transactions costs? This is passed on directly to the consumer resulting in higher cost.

The EU regulation ensures your prices are not overly inflated and in return CC companies cannot offer you higher cash backs obviously as you pointed out.

It is exactly the same - you pay a lower price and get a lower cash back or you pay a slightly higher price and get a higher cash back. I suppose the latter will appeal to most people as it is feasible but I prefer paying less as you will always win on cash transactions where card payments are not available for instance. Pricing will be homogenous across the board, so no you will not find merchants lowering their prices for cash transactions or where card payment is not available. They will simply price whatever the other guys are charging incl their CC transaction costs.

I was looking at Credit Cards in Europe today. To see what the rewards are like. And ya know, most of them are really quite poor. Lots of them start off with an attractive looking 3 to 5% cashback on purchases. But for the ones that offer that kind of return it goes to 0.5% cash back after the initial 3 months.

I checked out the Amazon one and it offers essentially 1.5% cashback on purchases made at Amazon for Prime Members. But only 0.5% on non-Amazon purchases. The return halves if you're not a Prime member.

After doing some research I found that the main reason for these poor rewards in Europe is due to Europe changing the regulations around how much card processing companies (Mastercard, Visa etc) can charge merchants. Less profits for them at the processing level means less rewards for customers.

All of this does temper my enthusiasm for Apple Card because from what I've read around the net, Americans have access to better cards already, some having 3% cash back on all sales, not just from Apple etc

But in Europe from what I've seen we don't have those kinds of cards anymore unless you're grandfathered in on an old card. I'm wondering now if Apple ever will release this outside of North America since financially it seems unprofitable with the reward level (1-3%) they are offering.

Just my thoughts.[/QUOTEm

 

[fairuz]

Shame on Tim Cook? Shame on irresponsible people who can’t manage their money. Credit cards are not evil, and I really wish people would stop acting like that. Be responsible. Buy what you can afford, and pay off your card.

IDK what the person was complaining about, but here are the real issues:
- CC companies charge fees that disproportionately hurt those doing smaller transactions. Small businesses hate them.
- Credit cards themselves are insecure af and never get fixed.
- I basically have to use a credit card to take advantage of all the special deals they have in place like cash back on certain purchases, especially with airlines. Why? It's a waste of time for everyone.
- There's a dangerous coupling of credit cards and corps like airlines, Amazon, and Apple. "Use this card for extra cash back on X products." It should be criminal that Apple gives you extra cash back for using Apple Pay.

Overall the CC companies have a worrying and unnecessary amount of control over the money flow. Why should it matter how I pay for things if it's all USD? Even worse, it matters to the merchant how people pay, and there's all this nonsense like Amex cards charging high fees and giving the buyer money back. And it only gets more complicated over time. Many are employed to deal with this ultimate pettiness.

 

[matrix07]

The exchange rate for foreign transactions is determined by Mastercard. There are no foreign transaction fees

This is already kicking PayPal butt.

 

[dilbert99]

No, I don't think it is a dumb!
It is a personal credit card, not a joined one.
If you wanted a joined one, look elsewhere. Plenty of other options for that.

Really? Apple comes out with a 0.0 version of a card and you stick up for them by blaming the user?
Its not a personal credit card, its an Apple Credit Card.
As Apple states:

A new kind of credit card, Created by Apple, not a bank

And it clearly shows. No joint accounts, not recurring payments requiring a CCV...

You can buy things effortlessly

Except when you want to tap and go with the card, that is not supported.

Or use the Apple‑designed titanium card anywhere in the world.

Unless you are filling out a form that requires a CCV.
It does have some features that will be good for competition like no annual fees/late fees etc, but you can be stung with their high credit cost which depending on the person can go as high as 24.24%

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Or bend.

Yes, sometime we bend things accidentally. Apple replaced this one for me a few years back (stupid new car electronic back hatch).

 

[Analog Kid]

I mean, people are already used to paying $x for y. Businesses are going to want as much revenue/profit as they can get away with.

(Also, it's very possible their merchant processors will just eat most of the savings anyway. That might have been what happened with most merchants after the Durbin Amendment passed to cap debit card interchange, as 57% had no change in their costs.)

Profit is a function of volume. If the costs of doing business go down then the store next door can lower their prices to steal your customers. You'd better do the same.

The Durbin amendment only affected debit cards, that's a different scenario than Quu is talking about in Europe where fees are capped for all cards. Capping fees for certain cards means the merchant would need to charge different prices for different transaction types, which risks confusing the shopping experience.

We're seeing this start to happen in many places, particularly gas stations, but it took time to catch on. It also took time for some state laws to catch up. The paper you linked to showed the results 7 years ago, and only a year after the law passed. A year isn't really enough time to change over a business model.

Rewards cards were a direct response to the Durbin amendment. The Durbin amendment allowed consumers the ease of a card based transaction but gave the banks only about a thirtieth of the interchange fee they were getting for credit cards because debit card transactions are secured. Rewards cards were a way of encouraging consumers to use credit cards rather than debit cards because there's a little something in it for them.

https://www.merchantmaverick.com/the-complete-guide-to-credit-card-processing-rates-and-fees/

Reward card interchange fees are about twice that of standard credit cards an are about 60 times the fee of debit cards. While debit/credit is a fairly straight forward line for merchants to draw, and they’re still reluctant, charging different prices for different credit cards is probably more than consumers will take. And given what I'm reading in this thread, people would kill to get an extra 1% "cash back", but probably wouldn't do squat to save 1% on any given transaction.

Rewards cards distort the market.

 

[dilbert99]

How much is the amount of titanium worth? What if I lose a card every week? By what time will I be able to afford AirPods from the amount of „lost“ titanium?

So many questions.

Less than a $1 in titanium
[doublepost=1553847782][/doublepost]

Haven’t used a signature in the uk for over 10 years or more probably a lot more

Most of the places I have needed a signature in Australia has been places like dental surgeries.
Not been asked in a shop for a signature in a long time.

I guess this is one of the things where the US is behind the times.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

I already have enough credit cards to buy most of the things that I don't already have - the problem would be paying it all back later if I were to do that. So, No Apple, I don't need another card. I don't need 2 hits on my married credit score for when I apply AND also when my wife applies.

 

[Classie]

Sharing accounts is a big thing for anyone in a long term relashionship - it really is a bummer that the Apple Card doesn’t support it.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

As a 40-something who has NEVER used a credit card (only debit cards), and has never used credit at all - i buy everything outright from cars to houses - I literally have no credit history (no student loan, no mortgage. Even though I make 400k+ a year I can't get a simple entry credit card as I'm 'not in the system'. I went to Experian and Transunion earlier this year as I wanted to get a secured-card that offered cash-back or miles - and neither could provide me with a credit report as I was 'not on file'.. I spend over 10k a year on Apple products, and have a long history of this. I wonder if your relationship with Apple will have any bearing on getting a card - or if it's simply a credit worthiness call by GS - in which case I'm SOL.

You'd make Dave Ramsey proud, but you did yourself a disservice by not building up a good credit report. On the other hand, if paying cash and using a debit card works, and you have been socking away money into an early retirement fund then you should be just fine. Don't sweat it, unless someday you need to buy something that you need to pay off over time, whether over 3-4 months, or 3-4 years.

I envy you that you don't have a mortgage at your age. I became disabled over 20 years ago at 36 years old, and so our house will be paid off in 8 years when I turn 65, since as a doctor I only insured myself for 50% of my income.

We still have over $160,000 available on credit cards (1/2 of that from just Chase alone), but we keep our card utilization under 10% and pay off the balance every month to avoid interest accruing. We use credit cards instead of debit cards to get 1-2% in cash back, and then just make one payment to each card each month to zero it out.

 

[PickUrPoison]

I already have enough credit cards to buy most of the things that I don't already have - the problem would be paying it all back later if I were to do that. So, No Apple, I don't need another card. I don't need 2 hits on my married credit score for when I apply AND also when my wife applies.

The only reason you might want to get the Apple card would be if it offers better perks compared to other cards you might have.

btw there’s no such thing as a married credit score, you and your wife have separate files, even if you have joint responsibility or authorized user accounts. One inquiry for each of you would likely not alter your FICO score; as a general rule one or two per year has no effect on most scores. Even 3-4 may only ding you 5-7 points or so, and then only if they’re recent, e.g. within a year. (However, some issuers may take a dim view of recent inquiries, even though they may not have affected your score. It can be seen as a red flag, specifically “credit-seeking behavior”. It really depends on the credit grantor, as to what they take into consideration in addition to, or even instead of, your FICO score.

 

[erpetao]

This credit card will probably block you from buying a subscription to Infowars.

 

[JustinM80]

The terms say that one would need at least a 750 or higher credit score for the Apple Card. That’s Goldman Sachs for you. But yet, I can’t wait to get one.

 

[GOAT4521]

So that means you won’t be able to set up recurring subscription payments that require a CVV?

I think the CVV will be stored inside of the Apple Wallet app.

 

[AngstyKylo]

So you can't "share accounts" meaning married couples can't have authorized users so that they can both keep track of finances?

That's kind of dumb...

The only marriage that is worth anything in the future is your tech allegiance(!)

I'm guessing this is still in early stages and will gain more features as it becomes more mature.

 

[rmoliv]

What would Steve Jobs think of this? If he came back to life he'd pass away again.