How to clean your Apple Card
support.apple.com
support.apple.com
The 2% unlimited cash back now has me using Apple Pay everywhere. At places that don't have it, I have to pull out the titanium card. Almost every place I go to people ask what is this card? Am I an Apple employee? Keep in mind, most places have never seen a titanium card before because they are typically given to extremely high net work individuals by AMEX and Visa.
After explaining what the card is. They invariably ask what is the benefit of the card. Being a nice guy, I explain them the benefits of the card.
The card is a conversation starter. It serves as an advertisement for people to sign up and it also serves as a way to get the establishment that you used the card to start accepting NFC payments.
None of this would be possible if the card was a crappy plastic material.
For example, most cards have a 2% cash back limit up to $6,000 dollars. There is the Citi Double cash card that does have unlimited but really it is 1.98 percent because you get 1% on every dollar spent and 1% on every dollar paid. However, if you apply it to your statement you have not paid the balance so it really is a bit lower than 2%. Not to mention, you need at least 25 dollars in cash back before you can use it and it expires.
Apple gives the cash back the next day. Which is insane. While Citi takes 1.5 months to give it to you. It is easy to forget about it and one of the reasons why so many people forget and it expires out.
The only exception is travel cards. If you travel a lot it might make sense to get one of those cards for the perks because your usage will offset the annual fee. In that department, Apple does provide no foreign transactions fees and I think that is good enough for me.
The benefit is you get the same cashback but the card (titanium, touch pay) and the services (application, integrations) are better.
I don't carry my wallet anymore, just my Samsung S10 5G. There are very few places in Australia where I can't pay with Samsung Pay (Westpac). It even gets me on public transport (Google Pay).
Increasingly we’re seeing contactless ATMs (in Europe) too so that’s a last resort.
If the network is out, noone using card payments will have any luck.
Magnetic stripes, haven't seen for ages. Cheques are not ever in use for normal shopping.
Only time will tell whether we get the Apple Card, but due to the Australian Reserve Bank’s interchange fee cap, we’ll likely not see the same cash back offer if it ever does land here.
It will be interesting to see other markets’ reception of Apple Card and Apple Pay too.
To me, the weirdest thing is seeing a customer service webpage for a credit card in the design language and rhetoric of computer hardware support.
It somehow feels similar to the recently discussed WeWork criticism of them not actually being a tech company, yet masquerading as one through design.
[0] https://monzo.com/fullmonzo/ [1] https://www.revolut.com/introducing-revolut-metal
Edited to link to revolut metal including apple style video of production, featuring Jony Ive sound-a-like
If you happen to have a real premium card, then probably people around you already know your status. They don't need to look at your credit card.
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.
So since most banks support Apple Pay (and Google Pay), pretty much everybody who is comfortable with technology uses it.
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.
Physical card is their best ads billboard. Perhaps they will remove it after a few years when they have enough market share.
If the physical card trips you up, remember that Apple is not above providing you adapters. “Apple Card” is first and foremost a service and iOS-based user interface.
Think about it: Why do you need any credit card at all? You have your phone, you can flash whatever bardcode/QR code auto generated, verified with your FaceID/TouchID. It would be ton more secure, prevent a lot of fraud and can do sophisticated things like automatic accounting, receipt keeping etc. BUT at the same time, it would dissolve the monopoly of 3 companies who are in the business of credit cards because virtually anyone can start mobile payment business this as long as POS systems were enabled for it. The widely deployed POS systems control which system of payment would become the norm. In countries where credit cards weren't the norms, mobile payments are the norms now. Other countries are left behind this revolution.
One's phone could be dead, or near 0-percent battery. The trend is for people to forego annual upgrades (phone lifespans are increasing), but those phones are also not getting maintenance -- so the battery performance is degraded. A phone with a degraded battery might barely pull through a day, if you remember to charge it the previous evening.
Clearly they didn't learn much from all those black scuffed dirty white MacBook charging cables...
> If your titanium Apple Card comes into contact with hard surfaces or materials, it's possible that the coating can be damaged.
This seems all but a guarantee!
This thing will be handled by dirty hands, slid in and out of machines, put into those folder things at restaurants (I've spilled salsa and other things on those more than once), and more.
I have a few metal cards... They're all dark colors, and I've never once had to think about how to keep them clean looking.
Then again... Wallet needs an iPhone to work ;)