It represents all the things Apple stands for. Like simplicity, transparency, security, and privacy. You can buy things effortlessly, with just your iPhone. Or, if Apple Pay is not yet supported by the merchant, use the Apple‑designed titanium card anywhere in the world.
Apple’s new credit card, the Apple Card, is now available for all US customers. But the Apple Card isn’t just a credit card; it’s Apple’s secret weapon.
Dave Smith for Business Insider:
To be clear: The Apple Card is extremely innovative. Apple has removed some of the biggest friction points between credit cards and customers: Signing up couldn’t be easier, rewards work in a straightforward way, customer service is tops, and using it is a breeze, whether you’re buying goods or paying off your bill. Plus, Apple uses machine learning to map out your purchases and visualize your transactions so you can understand how you spend your money.
The Apple Card raises the bar for how a credit card should perform, but it’s much more than that: It’s Apple’s secret weapon to sell more iPhones.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Card, which requires an iPhone, is yet another lure to upgrade from a crappy Android phone and also yet another reason for iPhone owners to stay in the ecosystem when they decide to upgrade their iPhone to a new one.
One point that I haven’t seen a lot: the packaging for the Apple Card is as elegant as ALL Apple packaging is. Honestly, it’s beautiful, with a deeply debossed Apple logo on a thick white enclosure, as opposed to the usual credit card you get in the mail, which is glued to a piece of paper and shoved into an envelope
I know some would scoff at Apple — “How many designers worked on the credit card and the envelope, and why can’t they fix [insert gripe of the day here]?!”
But this is why I love Apple. They still take the time to make everything just a little bit nicer than it has to be, even the stuff no one would ever think about.
It’s a nice card, but hardly a secret weapon unless the user sharpens the edges so it can be used as a cutting blade.
However, it’s not going to boost Apple’s value if that’s what they believe. Do people actually think if someone owns an AppleCard, they’re going to be suddenly be buying more Apple products? That is rather farfetched thinking. I guess they think that anyone who acquires a credit card suddenly becomes a compulsive buyer. AppleCard not going to bring significant value to Apple because most of the consumers Apple depends upon to buy products live outside of the U.S. and won’t have access to an AppleCard. In that respect, Wall Street already sees the AppleCard as a failure for Apple.
You’re thinking two-dimensionally. Like many of Apple’s moves, the Apple Card (along with Apple Pay) is a brilliant brand extension that keeps users happily ensconced within the ecosystem. The fact that they will earn millions (perhaps billions) off interest payments is just a bonus.
Well it did work brilliantly for GE for a decade or two under Neutron Jack. A credit issuing company never takes any risks, it’s a perpetual money making venture. Same with media producers. GE did that too. It was too much work for GE to focus on its core products, they actually outsourced appliance production to LG and Samsung for a higher margin—— just like Apple does.
Where is GE now?
Apple, with its China First strategy, is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
Credit card companies make money on every single purchase. So will Apple. Apple will make money even if you use your Apple Card to buy an Android phone for someone you don’t like.
Beware the hyperbole du jour! Apple does not use “machine learning to map out your purchases and visualize your transactions”. This is Computing 101, as it’s been used for decades, to group and summarize data by categories, locations, and dates, and to create graphs. The machines execute the code that they’ve been given to execute, using hard data that they’ve also been given. In these cases, the machines are not “learning”. Given the same input data, they will always create the same output, unless the code they’ve been given is updated by – you guessed it – a human!