6 ms·

A bit of a product marketing snafu by Apple if I may say. 1. Apple Cash is apparently not cash, nor a wallet, but a card that is stored inside wallet. 2.There i

A bit of a product marketing snafu by Apple if I may say. 1. Apple Cash is apparently not cash, nor a wallet, but a card that is stored inside wallet. 2.There is already Apple Wallet, Apple Pay, Apple Card. It looks to me that they're all the same. Why can't I Pay with the Cash in my Wallet. Or can I?

duskwuff 4y ago
> Why can't I Pay with the Cash in my Wallet. Or can I? You can. In fact, if you're using Apple Card, the cash-back rewards show up as Apple Cash.
- user_named 4y ago
  Yeah I was guessing that's possible. I mean that the separation of these into separate products seems confusing when they're actually one.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    > when they're actually one. They are not. Apple Cash does not require the user to have an Apple Card.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      Right, and part of why we're talking about Apple Cash right now is that Apple is expanding the reasons to use Apple Cash even without Apple Card. New features like person to person payments and Family Apple Cash accounts don't require Apple Card at all and are Apple Cash-focused features.
ryandrake 4y ago
> 1. Apple Cash is apparently not cash, nor a wallet, but a card that is stored inside wallet. 2.There is already Apple Wallet, Apple Pay, Apple Card. Nobody in technology, at least in the USA, seems to be able to make the marketing for their "payment things" understandable. On the Google side, there is (or was) Google Wallet (OG), Android Pay, Google Pay, gPay, now Google Wallet (new). I don't know which one I should be using, or what each one deliberately can't do. Some handset makers have their own apps: Samsung Pay, for example. Then, there's the individual apps: Venmo, PayPal, Square Cash, Zelle, Xoom... A web search shows there are probably a dozen more, all incompatible with each other. It's like VHS vs Betamax and HD-DVD vs. BluRay all over again, but instead with 20 different formats. How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?
- Krisjohn 4y ago
  Because money.
- buro9 4y ago
  Google Pay ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... ) can store my Tate and National Trust membership cards, my EU COVID passport (proof of vaccination and booster), as well as boarding passes. And it's smart enough to expire out cards from the pass as expired memberships or flights that have flown. Anything that can be represented in a barcode or QR code can be stored in it. Which of course turns out to be a lot of things, payments are just one part of it. Edit: added link, but it's preinstalled on most modern Android devices.
  - oezi 4y ago
    When I search for Wallet in the Play Store I don't even find a "Google Wallet" app nor do I find it on my Android phone. My experience with managing boarding passes in Android is absolutely abysmal because Android does not support pkpass (the format Apple uses).
    - buro9 4y ago
      Pkpass appears to be an Apple defined spec that isn't owned by a neutral party like a standards organisation. Yes they've published the definition ( https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/UserExperience/Reference/PassKit_Bundle/Chapters/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012026-CH0-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Us... ) but why would other companies embrace a definition and then entrench that when Apple could change it at any time or lock them out of future revisions? If an airliner is only making boarding passes available in pkpass, then ask your airliner to support more than just Apple devices. The one I flew with at the weekend "just worked". I didn't know about this stuff before your comment as I've not yet encountered a pkpass formatted digital file. But I do see that there are conversion apps available if I did give across them. I'm just not surprised Google wouldn't adopt a non standard format.
gnicholas 4y ago
Agreed. It's like the Apple TV moniker, which refers to hardware, software, and a subscription service.
- Zanni 4y ago
  Other people may blur the boundaries, but Apple distinguishes them. Hardware: Apple TV. Software: tvOS. Subscription service: Apple TV+.
  - ChrisRR 4y ago
    Now ask someone who doesn't know this already. Would they think Apple TV refers to the hardware, the software or a subscription service? The name is too prone to misunderstanding
  - hadrien01 4y ago
    Apple TV, Apple TV+, Apple TV app, Apple TV HD, Apple TV 4K. Those are all terms meaning different things on a single page from the Apple website.
  - rahoulb 4y ago
    Apple TV 4K, Apple TV HD - hardware Apple TV - app on various platforms (that offers the subscription service, and sometimes acts as a container for other services plus replaces the old iTunes Movie Store which also sold TV shows) Apple TV+ - subscription service tvOS - operating system (but most consumers will never have heard of this)
bibinou 4y ago
the name is a rip-off of Square's Cash App: https://cash.app https://cash.app Wallet is an actual wallet where you can put cards, coupons... Pay is the whole system of APIs used to pay via NFC or online, authed by biometrics (Touch/FaceID). As a user you just add your credit card and it works better than contactless credit cards. Apple Card is an Apple credit card with cashback backed by Goldman Sachs. US-only.
- dutchbrit 4y ago
  I wouldn’t really call it a rip-off. Cash is such a broad word.
  - bibinou 4y ago
    yeah rip-off was harsh (ESL). I see now that the Apple Pay Cash name was in place earlier. Though the brand presence and ad campaigns for (Square's) Cash App means it's a bonus anyway. (Remember Apple once tried to trademark App)
shrimpx 4y ago
It seems to be Apple's vehicle for making p2p payments, particularly through messages. It's also a virtual debit card, so you can spend or transfer the money, but it seems the its raison d'être is p2p payments.
kalleboo 4y ago
- Apple Wallet is an e-wallet that can contain many things - payment cards, store point cards, plane tickets, concert tickets, vaccine certificates, driver's license, etc. - Apple Pay is a method to pay using the payment cards in your Wallet in stores and online that is supported by many credit/debit cards - Apple Card is a MasterCard credit card - Apple Cash is an bank account with a VISA debit card. This is inline with other similar services like the popular "Cash app" Compared to other confusing naming schemes (Apple TV/+, and absolutely anything Google does) this seems pretty straightforward to me.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Interesting, this comment is the first I've learned/noticed that Apple Cash switched to the Visa network. As an Apple Cash user for some time (via the Apple Card and its Daily Cash), previously the Apple Cash card was on the Discover network and that limited its usefulness somewhat because Discover as a network is accepted by a lot fewer vendors than the top 2 of Visa/Mastercard. It's nice to know that it switched to the more common network. (Also a neat part of a virtual card: checking in the Apple Wallet I can see that the card already switched numbers/networks for me. I don't need to wait for a replacement card. If not for this comment I wouldn't have even thought to check if it had switched, just transparent in the background. I probably got an email on it I ignored if I had wanted to know sooner, but there are so many emails.)
  - dwaite 4y ago
    I don't believe they have done transparent migration yet; new accounts are just Visa Debit. You can of course deactivate and reactivate Apple Cash, which will create a new Visa-network-backed number.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      Anecdata of course, but like I said, my existing Apple Cash already switched transparently at some point according to the Apple Wallet app.
andrewaylett 4y ago
I'm assuming that under the hood it's a pre-pay debit card. An easy choice when they already have all the infrastructure for making payments using debit cards in their products.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
If you look at the fine print, Apple Cash appears to be a UI/branding layer for Green Dot Bank, a 40 yo bank in Utah. I believe you essentially end up with a FDIC bank account and Apple Cash just puts a huge brand name and pretty UI on the debit card for that account. So Apple Pay is the service, Apple Card is their credit card and Apple Cash is their debit card via some bank. You can sidestep all that and just put your own credit card in the Wallet and use some other cash-like service. The large problem with a lot of these cash-like services is in order for the exchange to happen, two people have to be on the same service. If Apple Cash takes off, then you just need to know if your friend has an iPhone and then its viable and much easier than having to go signup for one of these other services (zelle, cash app, venmo, etc.) just to chip in for a gift or dinner.
- kdot 4y ago
  You still have to "sign up" for Apple Cash though, which is a process that involves uploading your government identification.
  - mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
    Yeah, to be expected, it’s a bank account. Other services often make you validate a checking account or credit card which are run by banks and want ID to get accounts.
wan23 4y ago
You can Appple Pay with the Apple Cash in your Apple Wallet. You can also pay off your Apple Card balance with the Apple Cash, and also using the Apple Card earns you Apple Cash back. It's not a card in the wallet, but because the wallet UI only shows card UI components it's not surprising that you thought of it that way.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Apple Cash shows up as its own card in the Apple Wallet. It's the bank account Debit Card pairing to the Apple Card credit card if you have both. You can have an Apple Cash card without having an Apple Card, though with the "Daily Cash" that Apple Card earns you currently can't have an Apple Card without an Apple Cash card (so far as I'm aware). (Some confusion here is that you can have a separate Apple Store/iTunes credit that isn't Apple Cash and doesn't show up as a card in the Apple Wallet and can only be spent in the Apple Store/iTunes. Given the nature of how gift cards work that's likely to remain a separate "cash fund" and the two separate balances may always be a little confusing, with some people likely putting money into one when they meant to put it into the other. Hopefully Apple may find a good way to communicate the differences between them.)

duskwuff 4y ago

> Why can't I Pay with the Cash in my Wallet. Or can I? You can. In fact, if you're using Apple Card, the cash-back rewards show up as Apple Cash.

user_named 4y ago
Yeah I was guessing that's possible. I mean that the separation of these into separate products seems confusing when they're actually one.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  > when they're actually one. They are not. Apple Cash does not require the user to have an Apple Card.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Right, and part of why we're talking about Apple Cash right now is that Apple is expanding the reasons to use Apple Cash even without Apple Card. New features like person to person payments and Family Apple Cash accounts don't require Apple Card at all and are Apple Cash-focused features.

ryandrake 4y ago

> 1. Apple Cash is apparently not cash, nor a wallet, but a card that is stored inside wallet. 2.There is already Apple Wallet, Apple Pay, Apple Card. Nobody in technology, at least in the USA, seems to be able to make the marketing for their "payment things" understandable. On the Google side, there is (or was) Google Wallet (OG), Android Pay, Google Pay, gPay, now Google Wallet (new). I don't know which one I should be using, or what each one deliberately can't do. Some handset makers have their own apps: Samsung Pay, for example. Then, there's the individual apps: Venmo, PayPal, Square Cash, Zelle, Xoom... A web search shows there are probably a dozen more, all incompatible with each other. It's like VHS vs Betamax and HD-DVD vs. BluRay all over again, but instead with 20 different formats. How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?

Krisjohn 4y ago
Because money.
buro9 4y ago
Google Pay ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.walletnfcrel https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... ) can store my Tate and National Trust membership cards, my EU COVID passport (proof of vaccination and booster), as well as boarding passes. And it's smart enough to expire out cards from the pass as expired memberships or flights that have flown. Anything that can be represented in a barcode or QR code can be stored in it. Which of course turns out to be a lot of things, payments are just one part of it. Edit: added link, but it's preinstalled on most modern Android devices.
- oezi 4y ago
  When I search for Wallet in the Play Store I don't even find a "Google Wallet" app nor do I find it on my Android phone. My experience with managing boarding passes in Android is absolutely abysmal because Android does not support pkpass (the format Apple uses).
  - buro9 4y ago
    Pkpass appears to be an Apple defined spec that isn't owned by a neutral party like a standards organisation. Yes they've published the definition ( https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/UserExperience/Reference/PassKit_Bundle/Chapters/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012026-CH0-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Us... ) but why would other companies embrace a definition and then entrench that when Apple could change it at any time or lock them out of future revisions? If an airliner is only making boarding passes available in pkpass, then ask your airliner to support more than just Apple devices. The one I flew with at the weekend "just worked". I didn't know about this stuff before your comment as I've not yet encountered a pkpass formatted digital file. But I do see that there are conversion apps available if I did give across them. I'm just not surprised Google wouldn't adopt a non standard format.

gnicholas 4y ago

Agreed. It's like the Apple TV moniker, which refers to hardware, software, and a subscription service.

Zanni 4y ago
Other people may blur the boundaries, but Apple distinguishes them. Hardware: Apple TV. Software: tvOS. Subscription service: Apple TV+.
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  Now ask someone who doesn't know this already. Would they think Apple TV refers to the hardware, the software or a subscription service? The name is too prone to misunderstanding
- hadrien01 4y ago
  Apple TV, Apple TV+, Apple TV app, Apple TV HD, Apple TV 4K. Those are all terms meaning different things on a single page from the Apple website.
- rahoulb 4y ago
  Apple TV 4K, Apple TV HD - hardware Apple TV - app on various platforms (that offers the subscription service, and sometimes acts as a container for other services plus replaces the old iTunes Movie Store which also sold TV shows) Apple TV+ - subscription service tvOS - operating system (but most consumers will never have heard of this)

bibinou 4y ago

the name is a rip-off of Square's Cash App: https://cash.app https://cash.app Wallet is an actual wallet where you can put cards, coupons... Pay is the whole system of APIs used to pay via NFC or online, authed by biometrics (Touch/FaceID). As a user you just add your credit card and it works better than contactless credit cards. Apple Card is an Apple credit card with cashback backed by Goldman Sachs. US-only.

dutchbrit 4y ago
I wouldn’t really call it a rip-off. Cash is such a broad word.
- bibinou 4y ago
  yeah rip-off was harsh (ESL). I see now that the Apple Pay Cash name was in place earlier. Though the brand presence and ad campaigns for (Square's) Cash App means it's a bonus anyway. (Remember Apple once tried to trademark App)

shrimpx 4y ago

It seems to be Apple's vehicle for making p2p payments, particularly through messages. It's also a virtual debit card, so you can spend or transfer the money, but it seems the its raison d'être is p2p payments.

kalleboo 4y ago

- Apple Wallet is an e-wallet that can contain many things - payment cards, store point cards, plane tickets, concert tickets, vaccine certificates, driver's license, etc. - Apple Pay is a method to pay using the payment cards in your Wallet in stores and online that is supported by many credit/debit cards - Apple Card is a MasterCard credit card - Apple Cash is an bank account with a VISA debit card. This is inline with other similar services like the popular "Cash app" Compared to other confusing naming schemes (Apple TV/+, and absolutely anything Google does) this seems pretty straightforward to me.

WorldMaker 4y ago
Interesting, this comment is the first I've learned/noticed that Apple Cash switched to the Visa network. As an Apple Cash user for some time (via the Apple Card and its Daily Cash), previously the Apple Cash card was on the Discover network and that limited its usefulness somewhat because Discover as a network is accepted by a lot fewer vendors than the top 2 of Visa/Mastercard. It's nice to know that it switched to the more common network. (Also a neat part of a virtual card: checking in the Apple Wallet I can see that the card already switched numbers/networks for me. I don't need to wait for a replacement card. If not for this comment I wouldn't have even thought to check if it had switched, just transparent in the background. I probably got an email on it I ignored if I had wanted to know sooner, but there are so many emails.)
- dwaite 4y ago
  I don't believe they have done transparent migration yet; new accounts are just Visa Debit. You can of course deactivate and reactivate Apple Cash, which will create a new Visa-network-backed number.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Anecdata of course, but like I said, my existing Apple Cash already switched transparently at some point according to the Apple Wallet app.

andrewaylett 4y ago

I'm assuming that under the hood it's a pre-pay debit card. An easy choice when they already have all the infrastructure for making payments using debit cards in their products.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

If you look at the fine print, Apple Cash appears to be a UI/branding layer for Green Dot Bank, a 40 yo bank in Utah. I believe you essentially end up with a FDIC bank account and Apple Cash just puts a huge brand name and pretty UI on the debit card for that account. So Apple Pay is the service, Apple Card is their credit card and Apple Cash is their debit card via some bank. You can sidestep all that and just put your own credit card in the Wallet and use some other cash-like service. The large problem with a lot of these cash-like services is in order for the exchange to happen, two people have to be on the same service. If Apple Cash takes off, then you just need to know if your friend has an iPhone and then its viable and much easier than having to go signup for one of these other services (zelle, cash app, venmo, etc.) just to chip in for a gift or dinner.

kdot 4y ago
You still have to "sign up" for Apple Cash though, which is a process that involves uploading your government identification.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  Yeah, to be expected, it’s a bank account. Other services often make you validate a checking account or credit card which are run by banks and want ID to get accounts.

wan23 4y ago

You can Appple Pay with the Apple Cash in your Apple Wallet. You can also pay off your Apple Card balance with the Apple Cash, and also using the Apple Card earns you Apple Cash back. It's not a card in the wallet, but because the wallet UI only shows card UI components it's not surprising that you thought of it that way.

WorldMaker 4y ago
Apple Cash shows up as its own card in the Apple Wallet. It's the bank account Debit Card pairing to the Apple Card credit card if you have both. You can have an Apple Cash card without having an Apple Card, though with the "Daily Cash" that Apple Card earns you currently can't have an Apple Card without an Apple Cash card (so far as I'm aware). (Some confusion here is that you can have a separate Apple Store/iTunes credit that isn't Apple Cash and doesn't show up as a card in the Apple Wallet and can only be spent in the Apple Store/iTunes. Given the nature of how gift cards work that's likely to remain a separate "cash fund" and the two separate balances may always be a little confusing, with some people likely putting money into one when they meant to put it into the other. Hopefully Apple may find a good way to communicate the differences between them.)