The Apple Card is mostly digital, but the actual titanium card — with just your name, Apple logo and chip — is a handsome addition to your wallet, David Pierce write for The Wall Street Journal:
The Apple Card makes quite an impression. The white titanium slab contains no numbers or expiration date—only your name, an Apple logo and the chip. Whip it out of your wallet and it clatters onto a table with a delightful “tink” sound.
The card isn’t the point, though. The Apple Card is mostly a digital being, a combination of expense-tracker and bill-payer in an app on your phone. It’s also something of an ad for Apple Pay, the company’s tech for paying with iPhone, your Apple Watch or your Apple ID.
You apply for the Card in the Wallet app, which guides you through a set of simple steps. Tap the plus sign in the upper right corner, choose the Apple Card, enter some personal and income data and you’re off.
Goldman Sachs , Apple’s bank partner for the Card, reviews your application, does a TransUnion credit check, and accepts or declines. It works fast: In the time it takes to sign up for an app, I’d been approved for a new credit card. If you request a physical card, it takes a week or so to arrive, but as soon as you’re approved, you can start using the digital version on your phone.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is finally incentivizing the use of Apple Pay. What a brilliant idea!
Apple, give us a reason to use Apple Pay beyond looking like tech dorks in front of the line at the register. What’s the incentive to use Apple Pay? There is none besides looking like a flaming nerd. As if Apple doesn’t have any money. That, inexplicably, is how they approach Apple Pay. Hello, Tim? Eddy? Talk to some people who actually go to stores and shop for things, please.
Incentivize its use! Give Apple Pay users a percentage of every dollar spent via Apple Pay to spend at Apple Stores. Something. Anything! Get people used to using it first. Sheesh. It’s really not that difficult. It really isn’t. — MacDailyNews, August 6, 2015
Imagine at the special media event to introduce the next-gen iPhone next month, Apple CEO Tim Cook says something like this:
“And, of course, the new iPhone works with Apple Pay and, starting today, for every $100 you spend using Apple Pay, you get $1 off at Apple retail and online stores. So, spend $100 on groceries using Apple Pay, you get $1. Spend $300 on a plane ticket using the Delta app, you get $3. Use Apple Pay in your ExxonMobil Speedpass+ app to buy your gas. It all adds up! By the end of the year, you’ll likely have quite a discount on your next iPad, Mac, or iPhone!”
Would you use Apple Pay more if Tim Cook said something like that? We know we certainly would. — MacDailyNews, August 5, 2016
There is no better way to pay than with Apple Watch and Apple Pay. Two simple things could turbocharge Apple Pay usage: Better (or actual) signage at the point of sale and incentives for using Apple Pay. Imagine Apple Pay usage if Apple simply offered $1 to spend at the Apple Store for every hundred spent via Apple Pay. — MacDailyNews, November 30, 2016
I’ll be getting one soon. Just have to unlock that ridiculous credit checking mess.