The new Apple Card credit card has an iOS-only app to see transactions and make payments, so if you lose your iPhone you won’t be able to pay your bill online.
Nicole Nguyen for BuzzFeed News:
Apple Card is a new cash-rewards credit card that — Apple purports — is designed to be simple and transparent. But it’s also aimed at keeping you locked into your iPhone.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple “purports?” Purports means “to appear or claim to be or do something, especially falsely.” Is that really what Apple is doing? In fact, Apple Card is designed to be simple and transparent. Period.
There are no paper statements with the digital-first Apple Card. Unlike a traditional credit card, everything is accessed through the Wallet app on the iPhone, including transaction histories, total balances, previous statements, and payments. There’s no website to view the latest transactions made on the card or make a payment if you lose access to that Wallet app…
According to Apple Support, your options are: 1. Use an iPad or other iOS device to access the Wallet app, or 2. Call Apple Support (not, presumably, with the phone you just lost) and a representative will connect you to an Apple Card specialist at Goldman Sachs, Apple’s bank partner. You’ll need your full name, date of birth, last four digits of your Social Security number, and the phone number associated with your account to make a payment over the phone…
Nearly every other modern credit card offers users a way to access their account with a browser on desktop, giving them the flexibility to pay bills from any device — and Apple Card, despite its titanium, numberless, futuristic veneer, does not.
MacDailyNews Take: Actually, as per your own little report, Nicole, Apple Card gives you the flexibility to pay bills from not only your iPhone or iPad, but via any telephone in the world. Seems easy enough.
Easier than ham-handedly trying to gin up some exceedingly weak Apple Card FUD for hits, obviously.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “TJ” for the heads up.]
The inability to manage your account through standard browsers on actual computers is just plain stupid.
As the article pointed out:
In other words, nearly every other modern credit card offers users a way to access their account with a browser on desktop, giving them the flexibility to pay bills from any device — and Apple Card, despite its titanium, numberless, futuristic veneer, does not.
Apple Wallet is coming to the Mac as an app via Catalyst, so you’ll be able to pay that way soon, too.
Relax. Apple’s vastly smarter than you.
Not everyone with an iPhone has a Mac though
So, if the only way I can obtain my purchase history is through my iPhone, does that mean there is no way for me to get a PDF of my monthly statements?
PDF statements are downloadable from your iPhone.
What part of “security” do some folks not grasp? The Secure Enclave would be useless if you could just step around it with a browser.
You can “step around” it with a phone call though, so why shouldn’t you be able to login to a web portal to pay your bill?
Let me repeat: MacDailyNews Take: “Actually, as per your own little report, bla, bla, bla, bla, via any telephone in the world. SEEMS EASY ENOUGH.” Not.
…Why would I expect anything less than an unbridled fan boy, drunk on the Kool Aid response from our starry-eyed at MDN?
When was the last time anyone managed a credit card bill over a telephone? Big oops.
This policy will change once the push-back reaches critical mass. Mark my words.
It’s a great feature of the Apple Card. You knew there had to be a catch!
That’s false! I already set up for automatic payment by entering my bank account info into autopay. If I were to lose my iPhone right now, my automatic payment would still go through. Just set up autopay and go on with your life.
I recently received the Apple Card and one potential problem is the situation in which the iPhone is lost. Another related one is the inability to access the account from a desktop computer. The two together mean I will delay using the card.
author/journalist Nicole Nguyen for BuzzFeed News is just silly.
Why is it that humans love Schadenfreude? Why is it that no matter how great/innovative/different and finally refreshing something is, such as ApplePay/AppleCard, so many people STRIVE on FINDING the 1 thing that it misses and bring it DOWN with the joy of having discovered a weakness, INSTEAD of PRAISING it for disrupting the industry and NOT ABUSING as much as the industry has for decades/centuries?!!?
BITCHING for its OWN SAKE has no purpose. If you find the AppleCard so useless:
1. do not USE it, like switch tv channels if 1 offends you, but do not censor/deny it for the rest of us.
2. before you open your mouth, develop a BETTER alternative to AppleCard, then have the right to talk
3. don’t kill disruptive/creative/worthy EFFORTS, esp. when you can’t possibly, if you have any brain, logic, heart, defend “HOW IT”S ALWAYS BEEN DONE?! How mutant/(an)droid/dead/stubborn/backward can we be?!
Like EINSTEIN/Al-Anon say: solving things the SAME old ways, make us INSANE.
AppleCard has so many advantages, but the web browsing is more essential?!
apparently AppleCard allows iPhone/iPads to download PDF statements.
why need browser then?
Even if Apple will later add possibility for web browser to see account, just enjoy the fact now,
that AppleCard offers the SECURITY / EASE / SPEED / sophisticated SIMPLICITY (or simple Sophistication ; ) / CASH / NO FEES etc. that NO OTHER CREDIT CARD offers, for peep’s sake!
Who said web access was MORE important than security?
No one.
But web access is such a basic feature of literally every other credit card in North America that it’s omission is just plain stupid. For crying out loud, my local credit union with three whole branches has web access on top f the IOS app.