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I think there should have been no physical Apple Card. The design is very Apple, and surely looks and feels great. But it risks upstaging the big idea of paymen
by millstone 7y ago
I think there should have been no physical Apple Card. The design is very Apple, and surely looks and feels great. But it risks upstaging the big idea of payment flow modernization.
To stretch a bit: the iMac asserted that you don't need all those ports, and the Apple Card should assert you don't need that piece of plastic - or laser-etched titanium - in your wallet.
- stunt 7y ago> I think there should have been no physical Apple Card Physical card is their best ads billboard. Perhaps they will remove it after a few years when they have enough market share.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoPeople adopt this primarily because the card is titanium. It's a status symbol. Remove the card and you kill adoption. Paying with NFC will never seem as sexy as a paying with titanium. It's somewhat orthogonal to Apple's long-term goal of getting everyone to pay with Apple: in entrenches the coolness of physical payment methods over contactless.
- jgrantme 7y agoI think the physical card is (in part) an attempt to stimulate digital usage (especially in North America where adoption of Apple Pay is pretty low compared to other places like Europe). Give people something they're familiar with (a physical card), reward them with cashback (which they will likely use digitally), and eventually wean them off the physical card completely.
- sidr 7y agoI'm surprised to hear that Apple Pay has higher adoption in Europe, given that the iPhone has lower penetration there.
- cianmm 7y agoiPhone adaption might be lower, but contactless adaption is through the roof. I can’t remember the last shop I was at which didn’t accept contactless. Even vendors at farmers markets accept contactless these days. So since most banks support Apple Pay (and Google Pay), pretty much everybody who is comfortable with technology uses it.
- goldcd 7y agoNah - they have to give you something, as not everywhere will accept it and people would then panic about "I'll be stranded if my phone's not working". So you get the pretty little physical card to tick off that worry. They clearly don't want you to actually use it unless you have to though, hence halving the rebate.