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I'm still mystified by what supposed competitive edge the Apple Card is supposed to have. Its rewards program is pretty mediocre, and virtually every Visa/MC/Am
by ptmcc 7y ago
I'm still mystified by what supposed competitive edge the Apple Card is supposed to have. Its rewards program is pretty mediocre, and virtually every Visa/MC/Amex supports Apple Pay seamlessly as is.
I'm pretty bought into the Apple ecosystem and do almost all my spending via credit card. I feel like I am supposed to be the target market, so what is the selling point?
- reaperducer 7y agoIt's my understanding that it will be easier to get an Apple branded credit card than most cards with similar features and rewards. To get no fees and cash back rewards, a lot of banks make you jump through hoops, have better than average credit, maintain a linked account with a minimum balance, and other things. Apple also seems to be emphasizing the simplicity of its card, and making it easier to manage than many other cards currently available. It's not the right card for everyone. But if there was a single "best" card, then there would be only one card, and everyone would have it.
- bdibs 7y agoI’m thinking about getting it for online purchases with Apple Pay and Apple purchases (maybe). It’d be a replacement for my Citi Double Cash, but even then the only real difference would be daily rewards vs monthly.
- paul7986 7y agoI think I read that if you lose your Apple Credit Card they will issue you a new one automatically in Apple Pay. You'll still get the physical one in the mail later, but if true that's a better UX then what all other cards currently do.
- shimms 7y agoUp, a relatively new digital bank in Australia does this already - I had my card setup in Wallet about 2 minutes after signing up online, a full week before the physical card arrived.
- Fnoord 7y agoMy bank (Bunq) allows me to use offline and online debit cards, for free. Linked to any IBAN (I can have 25 max). The online debit card's CVV code changes every 5 minutes which is convenient enough.
- kristianc 7y agoIf this is a competitive edge for now, it won’t be for long when challenger banks start arriving in the US. All standard for them.
- frutiger 7y agoI recently reported a fraudulent transaction on my card. My existing card was invalidated and a new one was on the way. Apple Pay was automatically made aware of this, it said something to the effect of: “Looks like you are getting a replacement card. You can still use this until it arrives.” After it arrived, the number had automatically updated (I didn’t notice exactly when). In other words, this particular aspect of the UX is already solved.
- millstone 7y agoHow did you discover the fraudulent transaction? How did you report it?
- frutiger 7y agoI have every transaction send me a notification from the Chase app. I called up Chase when I noticed a transaction I hadn’t made.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoDepends on the bank. I had to cancel some cards a few months ago and it made them disappear from Apple Pay (with a push notification of course). But I think that might be because I chose the stolen option.
- kalleboo 7y agoMy bog-standard credit card lets you add new cards to Apple Pay from within their app before the actual physical card is issued.
- sgjohnson 7y agoAmex (at least in the UK) does that already. I report my physical card as lost/damaged, the one I’ve set up in Apple Pay automatically updates with a new number.
- arcticbull 7y agoThis is a feature of EMV tokenization and not limited to Apple Card. Any card you have in Apple Pay does exactly this, and other issuers have started allowing you to add your card to Apple Pay before you receive the physical one in the mail. As with Apple Card if you report any of these lost or stolen they'll rotate your card's DAN ("Device Account Number").
- synaesthesisx 7y agoIt's made of titanium.
- pcr0 7y agoNo fees and better UX are the main selling points. It might shine for foreign transactions: no fee (usually 2%) + 1% cashback seems pretty good. If we're being realistic though, they'll probably have a terrible FX spread.
- HeavenFox 7y agoiirc the forex rates are set by the payment network i.e. MasterCard, hence you should be no worse off than any other MC card
- pyromine 7y agoWhile forex is set by the network, some cards charge a cross border assessment (CBA) fee on international purchases. Though admittedly I have 3 cards with no CBA and only that charges a 3.8% CBA... but I did prioritize for cards better for international travel. Most of my friends have cards that do charge a CBA
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoMC provide a currency conversion rate, yes, but a lot of card issuers also add a foreign transaction fee of some kind on top of that, sometimes both a percentage and a fixed charge.
- arcticbull 7y agoIn the credit card world, "no foreign transaction fees" means, literally, the mid-market rate. If they charge a spread on forex, it's very clearly spelled out in the disclosures as required by law. It's not advertised as a no foreign transaction fee card if they have a forex spread. That's not something they mess around with. No forex fee is pretty much table stakes these days. Just be careful, if someone in a foreign country offers to bill you in your local currency you literally cannot win. They whack you with a ~10% "convenience" fee and if your issuer charges foreign transaction fees, they'll do that anyways because it's based on point of sale and not based on currency.
- matwood 7y ago
- sschueller 7y agoApple wants the data but instead of doing something stupid like facebook with Libra they are going the old route and just running a card instead.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoApple is not a data company. They want money, not data.
- millstone 7y agoApple says "Even Apple doesn’t know what you bought. Or where. Or how much you paid."
- astura 7y agoThey aren't "running a [credit] card," Goldman Sachs is the one doing that. The card is merely cobranded so the Apple involvement is limited to it's name/brand and they get a small kickback on card activities. Same if you got a card for a charity, alumni association, or baseball team.
- millstone 7y agoI'm bullish on Apple Card. Compared to my MajorBank card, I expect that Apple Card will have somewhat worse rewards. But the process - signup, spending tracking and notifications, accessing rewards, freezing, cancellation - will be leagues better, and privacy will be better too. That will be their edge. The MajorBank mobile app is weird and janky feeling, with lots of ads and other nonsense in it. It pushes me to open investment accounts and take out a mortgage. It tells me I can get 10% back at KidsPizzaRestaurant. It promotes "offers we've selected just for you based on your relationship with MajorBank," through virtue of monitoring my spending history. I expect none of that from Apple. In my mind the risks are 1. Goldman Sachs and 2. Apple's financialization / being incentivized to push people into debt.
- arcticbull 7y agoApple Card is just a co-branded credit card no different than a Chase United MileagePlus card. Apple, like United, is the co-brand partner -- the face -- Goldman, like Chase, does literally everything else. Apple Card has a few neat features but not much more than anything else you've added to your Apple Wallet. Credit cards are a high CAC business in the premium space -- hundreds to a thousand dollars for an Amex Platinum class card. All Apple does different here is lower CAC by leveraging their immense brand power and their retail network and a few neat frilly UI features. Those aren't worth the opportunity cost of a 2% flat cash back card with no annual fee like the Citi Double Cash, or 2.67% with Bank of America if you have 100K in total balances including investments. Those are the numbers to beat, and also why it's so hard to truly innovate in this space.
- et2o 7y agoThis card is offering 2% cash back with no annual fee so long as you use Apple Pay. Seems pretty competitive.
- saltminer 7y agoIt's really not at all competitive. A shocking number of places still use a crappy magstripe reader or have a nice new Vodafone terminal but disable NFC (and possibly chip as well). Apple Card only gives you 2% if you can use NFC, Citi gives you 2% even at hotels and airlines that require a card # online, and parks and old gas stations that still just have a magstripe reader. (I've never been to a hotel that took chip or NFC for last-minute bookings, it's always a crappy old magstripe reader built into the keyboard.)
- Tempest1981 7y agoNo late fees is nice. Or at least less evil.
- jldugger 7y ago> Its rewards program is pretty mediocre, and virtually every Visa/MC/Amex supports Apple Pay seamlessly as is. Three use cases: card swipes, tap to pay, and Apple purchases. For card swipe, 1 percent is meh. For tap to pay, 2 percent cashback is about as good as it gets without messing with annual fees. The daily cash back is a mild improvement over other, comparable plans like '1 percent when you're billed, 1 percent when you pay that bill.' For Apple specific purchases, this replaces the Barclay's branded card, and the cash back plan is largely an improvement over the '$25 Apple giftcard' seen previously. Beyond that, the card is advertised as 'no fees.' Not even for cash advances, late or missed payments. So how do they solve the no-cash-advance fee problem? Can't have cash advance fees if you don't offer cash advances. Hence the rules outlined in the article about cash equivalents.
- arcticbull 7y ago> 2 percent cashback is about as good as it gets without messing with annual fees. Citi Double Cash is 2% flat cash back with no annual fee, and BoA has a 2.67% cash back card if you have 100K in assets with them. Cash advances and late or missed payments fees are rare if you keep on top of things, but the spread on cash back hits your wallet every time you use it.
- LateRuin 7y agoI have that 2.67% BAC Platinum Honors card, a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, and a Barclays Uber card (4% cash back at restaurants) I plan to cancel them all when the Apple card comes out. Why? I hate the idea of banks, they should not exist in our digital world. A single US Treasury app on our phone could handle all payments and store our digital cash. Even though Apple card is through Goldman, its a pragmatic first step in eliminating these useless (retail) banks. At least thats my hope.
- astura 7y agoOther 2% cards without annual fees include PayPal MasterCard and Fidelity Visa..
- 7y ago
- onion2k 7y agowhat is the selling point? It's got an Apple logo on it.
- jiva 7y agoGenerating virtual credit card numbers is kind of a big sell for me. I double any other credit card companies will have anything comparable to Apple's UI/UX of it either.
- nfRfqX5n 7y agoyou can do this with citi and capital one, but yes the UI is terrible. citi requires flash player or an absolutely terrible java desktop app. capital one requires a browser extension
- empath75 7y agoIt’s quite pretty. I’ll use it for Apple Pay but nothing else most likely.