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Apple Cash

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167 pointsjeanniesarah197 comments

In India, the coalescing of payments around the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)'s payment network and standard called Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been a gamechanger. Bank consumers can create virtual addresses that they can give to any individual or entity and use it for sending / receiving money. The recipient can be a customer of any bank, not necessarily theirs. As long as the bank is on the NPCI backbone (almost all banks are), the transaction is safe, secure and seamless. At the moment, there are no fees for using UPI and the transaction limit is Rs. 200,000 (approx. USD 2500), so a vast majority of small ticket purchases can be done electronically. The transaction volume statistics at NPCI is pretty impressive. https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics

The Economist recently discussed. To demonstrate the success of UPI, the mentioned that panhanders now routinely present an UPI barcode instead of a pan. I doubt that Apple Cash will have the same success.

If apple makes it fee-free and paperwork free even for small businesses, and they make an android compatible app, then it will be successful and will take over from banks and MasterCard/visa.

Otherwise it'll remain a tiny proportion of the overall payments industry.

link?

Beggars in Mainland China have been presenting QR codes (for Alipay and WeChat Pay) for years now.

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/beggars-with-qr-co...

Goes to show that deft government regulation/steering can really achieve something. Similar to SEPA in the EU.

I read about a lot of proprietary apps/services in this chat to allow easy and instantaneous transfers of money between parties. They probably work fine and most importantly filled a gap at the right time.

But with SEPA Instant Payments (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...) there is:

- A scheme that works based on standards: ISO PACS messages (easy for other banks to join)

- Actually transfer the funds from bank A to bank B (not sure if other schemes mentioned here basically work on a "we received an acknowledgement, we promise to send the actual money later via a real payment") in a 10 second period

- Does not depend on the commitment of a (small) group of private companies top keep existing, but instead depends on an obligation in EU law enforcing the national banks to force their member banks to implement it

The only thing that still sucks is that you send money to others based on their IBAN - which is fine but definitely not as intuitive as an e-mail address or phone number.

UPI's design is very good. It does all of the mentioned points along with ease of use.

1. You can discover the counterparty using their registered mobile phone number tied with their bank account. In B2B and P2P scenarios, the business or the individual already has the counterparty's phone number in most cases. So, this handles like 90% of the cases of simple discoverability. For use cases like sending money to friends/family, this is perfect.

2. The mapping of the virtual address to the bank account is maintained and managed by the banks (as part of the bank's UPI interface mandated by the standard) and shared with the NPCI's UPI backend using tokenization.

3. A user can create multiple virtual private addresses [VPAs] (eg: mybillpay@bigbank, subscriptions@bigbank etc.,). The user can then track their spends/receipts by VPA.

The ease of use is an order of magnitude higher compared to entering bank account information. Settlements are bank-to-bank and instantaneous (~2-3 secs) powered by the NPCI backbone.

India used to have a high use of Cash-on-delivery (COD) for e-commerce. This gave a good electronic equivalent for COD that also helped e-com operators.

> IBAN - which is fine but definitely not as intuitive as an e-mail address or phone number.

I see how that makes sense for most people, but I have so many emails and phone numbers and change them so frequently that I find it somewhat spooky. Providers can re-assign a phone number after some time, and when I transfer money using a phone number the app does not show me the name of the recipient before making the transfer (understandably, as that would be a terrible privacy leak), so I don't feel comfortable doing it...

At the same time, I am pretty sure that banks are loth to re-assign an account number, and if they do so, have processes in place that are adequate to the significance of that (as opposed to telco providers, who presumably did not intend for their phone numbers to serve as an identifier for money transfers...)

It's really ridiculous that EU is relying on Mastercard/Visa everywhere. There is EPI (European Payments Initiative, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative), but it's slow. And not everyone is happy with that, so there's a competing initiative called P27 https://nordicpayments.eu/

I'm reminded that in 1994, in Germany, I could give you a number and you could send me money, for free, via the post office.

I find it odd things like this, Venmo, Square cash even need to exist. There’s a reason none of them get used much (or even exist) outside the US. Just fix banking in the US and they problems they solve disappear. In the UK (and the EU I believe too) bank transfers and instant and free. Digital banks like Monzo make it even easier (through contact syncing, better UI). Third party apps need not get involved.

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

An IBAN is just the sort code and account number, with a prefix, so would be just as easy to remember.

However, a sort code is always presented as 12-34-56 and the account number normally shown as 1234-5678 - so it's easily chunked and very easy to remember.

You also rarely need it among groups primarily using Monzo - which among my UK friend group is universal. Just pick from contacts, just like Apple Cash.

I've also found paying strangers on Monzo to be ridiculously easy, you both turn on bluetooth and go to "pay nearby" screen. You just ask them "Are you <full name>?" to verify, then send money.

While very true, I think the point is that if you come across someone not using Monzo as their bank it’s almost just as easy to send them money.

This varies by country, but e.g. in Finland IBANs completely replaced legacy numbers in 2010.

Mine is 5 characters longer than the legacy number was (added "FI", 2 check digits, 2 padding zeroes, removed dash), for a total of 18 characters.

You can use mobile phone numbers here too (though admittedly UK account numbers are easy enough most people just use those )

Some countries only use IBANs, without some other local account identifier.

In the Netherlands a similar app is popular called https://www.tikkie.me. Commercial banks have also implemented their own solutions for generating payment links though. See https://www.ing.nl/particulier/digitaal-bankieren/mobiel-ban....

Payment links are easier and quicker to use than manually entering details in your banking app.

In Estonia, you can link a phone number to your IBAN. When making payments, the sender just needs a phone number, and the corresponding IBAN is automatically looked up. (The lookup service is managed by the central bank, and used by all (major) banks.)

I don't think I've seen this, do you have a link to learn more?

It's apparently called “proxy payment”: https://www.lhv.ee/en/proxypayment

Same in Poland, thanks to BLIK payments. Works across all major banks. https://iko.pkobp.pl/iko_en/features/mobile-transfer/

There's a similar system in several country (Spain as well for example, called Bizum). It's a shame that it's not a Europe-wide system.

We have that here for Zelle, which is built-in to some banking apps, making it really easy for most people to achieve this. You can alternatively give them a name or email as well. Zelle is not perfect but I have used it often just because it is built-in to my banking. I just wish I could have multiple bank accounts hooked up to it properly, not sure how to sort that out.

The same exists in Spain (albeit with limits per month), it's called Bizum: https://bizum.es/en/about-us/

Among many reasons why exchanging an IBAN and submitting a SEPA transfer in the EU is so cumbersome is that there were at least two standards to encode those details in a QR code.

It seems that, by now, except Czech Republic & Slovakia [1], the EPC QR code [2] has won.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

In Spain we have this Bizum thing that allow us to use phone numbers to send money between bank accounts. I Brazil we have Pix which is similar but allows great flexibility on how to identify one person(phone, email, random key)

Canada has email money transfers that is done via the big banks.

In Australia we can use a phone number or email address to transfer money. It’s near instant transfer and even comes up with the full name of the person you’re sending money to.

Little cumbersome since I never bothered to get peoples phone numbers till recently.

My experience with Paypal is the opposite. On multiple occasions I've had someone send me money on Paypal, but then it gets held up in checks and verification for 2-4 weeks, during which time I cannot access it. Sometimes it is instant though. There seems to be no pattern to it. This lack of certainty discourages me from using Paypal to receive payments in the future as I now consider it as a risky, slow, last-resort option.

If the PayPal transfer was funded by a credit card they’ll often put a “hold” on it until it finally clears.

In argentina you can set an 'alias' for your account, if you don't you get one by default... I put my name as alias, I started getting payments from people I don't know o.O

If US we use Zelle, it's a for profit company owned by the large US banks. If your bank supports Zelle, you can send money instantly.

But, it’s not nearly as popular as Venmo. I’ve never been asked to send anyone money over Zelle, but Venmo is used often. Maybe it’s a regional thing (network effects are huge here), but just because something is supported by our banks doesn’t mean it gets used.

Also, I don’t necessarily want to login to my bank app to send money to someone to cover dinner. But a secondary app, like Venmo, is fine.

SF anecdotes:

My old house cleaner used Zelle, new one Venmo. I recently prepaid for a camping trip and needed 40 parents from kids’ school to pay me back. Most used Venmo, a few used Zelle, one sent to my wife’s PayPal. Most of my friends use Zelle (and close friends and family use Apple Cash because it has the least amount of friction, once set up).

My kid in preschool has an extra sports class and music class. Both are paid by Zelle. Last month I got a haircut and the owner had a sign saying she preferred Zelle (saves 2-3% vs Cc/Square). Zelle seems to be growing amongst small businesses.

I once sent a friend who works at Square some square cash. It went unredeemed because he forgot about it. Had to resend.

I’ve only used wires when buying homes.

I use ACH to pay taxes, some utilities, etc.

StateFarm lets me pay my insurance bill with ApplePay, which gives me 2% cash back.

In short, very Balkanized with no dominant system.

I've only ever used one bank that supports Zelle (and I'm departing that bank), and I've never once heard of anybody using it.

Yes the US does have Zelle technically, but it's not really a solution at least in the foreseeable future.

"Technically?" Curious how you've even managed to avoid it, frankly – all of the largest US banks have it: Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Capital One, and Wells Fargo, as well as 1,536 other banks.

Going down this list, I don't think I've ever used a bank that didn't have it: https://www.zellepay.com/get-started

Zelle always felt to me like the banks chasing down the already-escaped cattle.

If you wanted a no-security-promises send-money-to-your-friends system, you probably already had PayPal or CashApp or something else of the sort. As far as I can tell, it's a popular fit for people who were scraping PayPal's "seriously, your selling-stuff-on-Facebook thing is a business, pay business fees" detection a little too closely.

The timing also seemed odd, with the promises of FedNow being "real soon now" -- do they intend to eventually run Zelle atop it, or is it an attempt to build an installed base (and vendor lock in) before every bank in the country can say "Well, we're all on the same network, so transfers are immediate for everyone?"

Bank transfers are not instant in Norway at least. There is a popular peer to peer app called Vipps that handles all of the complexity for you. If somebody's at your door picking up the couch you sold online you can't wait for the bank transfer to go through.

In Canada you’ve been able to send money to people for 15 years just by knowing their email address. You also set a security question. I also had a debit card I could use in most stores almost 30 years ago.

I was shocked as a young adult when I could travel in the US and use my debit card to get money at almost any atm, yet Americans had to sometimes seek out the correct ATM, even in their country.

I was shocked again in Japan when I moved here ten years ago when online banking was useless, transfers took up to 3 days, and most of the bank’s atms closed at 5 or 6pm. Oddly enough I could always find some atm open 24 hours that worked with my Canadian debit card, even when I could not find an atm open that worked with my Japan Post bank debit card. Those problems are all solved now, but it’s no wonder that there are now 30+ competing digital payment systems in Japan vs just a few in Canada. You also have to still really go out of your way when choosing a bank to make sure that your debit card will work overseas.

The original Canadian system is called Interac, and it’s nice that everyone has been able to use it for 30+ Years. I’ve never heard of anyone being blacklisted due to an error, like you hear about with PayPal and the other things that have come since then.

The flip side in Canada is our wire system for large transfers. We rolled our own technology and it is a complete failure. I do wire transfers many times per year and I would say 1/3 of them end in “lost” payments that require multiple phone calls and a number of days for the investigations group to track down. And this is through no error on the sender or recipient side (as explained by the investigations teams). There have been a number of articles over the last few years on the topic and I feel awful for those involved who actually do make a legitimate mistake (transpose numbers of a branch number for example) and never see their money again.

When it works perfectly, the transaction is still nowhere near instant (transfers “cross” only at certain times of the day, almost as if it involves actual people driving between banks - ludicrous!) and recipient banks often do not recognize receipt for a day. And the fees are relatively absurd ($80-120 to send and to the same to receive) considering Interac money transfers are free.

I’ll note that literally everyone I deal with shares the same experiences with wires.

It is bizarre that the largest, likely most important, transactions we have a system that works objectively far worse with fewer checks and balances and more opportunity for error than the system we use for meaningless small transactions.

This is a really surprising comment to me. I also do many wire transfers and EFTs (used to run an investment company, so on the order of 200 incoming/outgoing EFTs and 4-5 wires per month) and have no idea what you are talking about. The only times I've had issues is either (1) when the banking information was entered incorrectly, either by a client or by my staff; (2) if it's a weird kind of trust account that doesn't accept direct wires and needs to go through an intermediary account, which is really rare.

I would really like to know what activity you are doing that is causing you so many payment processing issues.

Unless you are talking about LVTS which AFAIK is only used for inter-bank transfers? I have no experience with that system.

I’m not the OP, but anecdotally as an American who used to work for a Canadian company which handled cross-border payroll by wire from Canada, my experience was for the most part that our payroll person worked her ass off to get everything right each time and that it was quite a significant amount of work. The actual transfers would always settle on the date expected and as expected, but I was always missing $10. I took it as a professional expense (loss) on my taxes, and no one from my bank to TD (the firms bank) could tell me which intermediary was taking a fee. They had tried for years before I came along to get to the root cause of it. All the US based people had the same issue.

I moved to Canada from the US recently and was shocked at how poorly Interac e-transfers work and that there is no Venmo/Cash equivalent. The system seems to assume a 1:1 mapping from phone numbers or emails to bank accounts. Having multiple bank accounts means disabling and reconfiguring the autodeposit features constantly. I've also gotten used to friends not receiving transfers I send them, which was never a thing with Venmo/Cash -- you just check the history in the app.

ATMs are also mind-boggling after getting used to banks that will refund ATM fees in the US. In Canada it's back to the fee to use ATM + fee from the bank for using an ATM that I remember from 20 years ago in the US.

Instant SEPA is still a bit of a luxury feature adopted mostly by fintechs, at least the sending side.

I believe Monzo is becoming available in the US so this might help improve the situation there, at least for monzo-to-monzo transfers. However I guess the whole system needs improving to allow seamless inter-bank transfers without a middleman.

US FedNow instant payments go live next year.

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?

> 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.

Yeah I was guessing that's possible. I mean that the separation of these into separate products seems confusing when they're actually one.

> when they're actually one.

They are not. Apple Cash does not require the user to have an Apple Card.

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.

> 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?

Because money.

Google Pay ( 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.

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).

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/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.

But what do you mean with "just worked"? Where did the pass show up?

The airline app offered a button to add the boarding pass to Google Wallet, I pressed the button (because airline apps are slow, and a local asset would be more reliable) and it appeared in Google Pay and everything went smoothly. The airport barcode scanner worked, the boarding gate scanner worked. More... the entry in Google Pay was updated with the gate number and notified me of the change, and the flight departure time was updated. Even the priority boarding is reflected on it which allowed me access to the first queue. Links from the boarding pass went to "Booking management" and also "Flight status detail".

It literally "just worked". It was intuitive too... I'd not seen it before and knew where to find everything.

I hadn't seen the functionality before (but haven't travelled in ages), and everything I would reasonably hope for from it was there working flawlessly. Even this morning when I looked at it I see it's moved into the "Expired passes" section as I would expect from a flight in the past.

Similar for the COVID pass in Google Pay... it was accepted at KubeCon, it was accepted at the Canadian border, it was accepted at the Spain border. Everything "just worked".

Google Wallet is likely fully implemented in the Google Pay app today, and the change is going to be a rebranding just to let people know you can do more than just pay for things. I don't work for Google or hold shares, all of this stuff is just me using the product as a user... it all works great for me, YMMV etc.

I never download Airline apps so there isn't a way to add passes to Google Pay for me.

Let's see if wallet changes this.

> 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/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?

That's overly paranoid, and the defensiveness leads to self-defeat.

There's no incentive for Apple to change the spec confrontationally like that, especially if more people use it. People will stop buying or using their products.

From my perspective, no-one's using this ticketing spec any more because of this fear. You have to download apps for all the services you want and view your tickets/passes/cards in those apps. Very view companies export just the card/ticket without an app (when some of them started out doing this), and increasingly they just keep the ticket in their app. The only thing that seems to consistently work for more than a couple of years are my bank cards - presumably because I can pay with contactless.

Those services which have given up using Wallet are now harder to use and less appealing. They create friction and dissatisfaction with every transaction. And now I don't trust Apple Wallet any more (in terms of being useful). I actually feel freer to leave the Apple ecosystem now than I ever have done because nothing works as well as promised. (The two things keeping me with Apple are not Apple benefits, but Google's failings: surveillance based business model and that their ecosystem looks worse still).

For me Google's main issue is security updates. My 2 1/2 year old Pixel 3 is effectively trash because they only provided 3 years of security updates.

https://grapheneos.org/releases#blueline-stable

> 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".

And I'd get the same reply I get when I ask for an upgrade.

Coming Soon.. https://wallet.google/

I think it was announced at Google IO a week or two ago.

How did you get your EU Covid pass added if i may ask? On my brand new Samsung phone it only lets me add predefined cards, most of which are quite useless (ie. Various US Transit Cards)

> How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?

Because... money? Venmo built up the biggest user base and was subsequently bought out by PayPal for big bucks. Zelle was a major initiative by the banks themselves, but too late, I suppose, to sway the habits of the consumers themselves. There was also SquareCash, but they were also too late into the game, particularly because they had no institutional support behind them like Zelle. Lastly, Apple Cash, while particularly convenient, IMHO just did not advertise it well enough. Also, being limited to Apple devices only, kinda misses the point of making payments easy, since you can't be expected to always remember/check which device does your payee have.

Most other service you mentioned were just regular payment processing intermediaries, not p2p solutions like Venmo/Squarecash/Apple Cash.

It's a mess indeed, but at the end of the day, from my experience, Venmo in the US still is the go-to method, seconded only by Zelle.

I usually pay people online with Paypal. Isn't that p2p given that you send money using only their email address? What do Venmo/Zelle give over that?

To pay with PayPal, cash moves: Your Bank Account -> Your PayPal Account -> Their PayPal Account -> Their Bank Account.

That's how a client-server model works, definitely not p2p.

I have no clue how Venmo or Zelle work though, so I don't have an answer to your latter question.

Zelle is bank2bank in theory though the one time I used it the payment got stuck in some sort of limbo for awhile, not sure why.

Next time I’ll just use the bill pay and make the bank eat the cost of a stamp.

PayPal is complicated and difficult to use. There are lots of different ways to pay people and they use dark patterns to try and get you to use a method that costs you fees. And this is coming from someone who has used it for 20 years. Venmo is starting down that same road, likely due to it being purchased by PayPal.

Fundamentally, nothing really. It's all the same: money moves from one person to another—quickly, instantly, and no fees (unless it's a business transaction)—as long as it doesn't leave the network. But therein lies the rub: money has to leave this network occasionally because you cannot send money peer-to-peer to from PayPal to a merchant not using PayPal (like Amazon), and that is the troublesome part where money has to be ACH'd to bank accounts.

And as such, the p2p ecosystems differentiate themselves by giving people ways to pay merchants without explicitly needing to move that money out of the network. So, Cash App issued a debit card, and then PayPal, and then Venmo (yep, even though it's a subsidiary, it's a separate card). And then some of them started using real bank accounts (with routing/account numbers) to back the stored balance. And the result today is that all these p2p apps look awfully a lot like banks, but less encumbered by regulations because they don't do everything that banks do.

Back to your question, why bother changing to Venmo (or Cash App) when PayPal is basically the same at this point? Obviously, the primary reason would be if everyone you know is using not-PayPal. A secondary reason is the same reason that people have different credit cards from different banks: different rewards schemes (yep, there are incentives for using those p2p debit cards).

Zelle is probably the odd one out here, because it's just an extra thing built on top of existing participating banks that already have all these ways of moving money out of their networks. It's effectively a wire transfer replacement without the fee (or a physical check replacement without the check-writing).

(Disclosure: am employed by a company that has a p2p product.)

> Obviously, the primary reason would be if everyone you know is using not-PayPal.

Where Venmo wins with Zelle and PayPal is the privacy: you don’t have to hand out your email address or phone number — you’re payee only knows your handle.

> And the result today is that all these p2p apps look awfully a lot like banks, but less encumbered by regulations because they don't do everything that banks do.

They don't just look, they are banks (or has a bank they outsource the regulated activity to). This is a piece they're not too keen on disclosing, except in very tiny print, as they wouldn't like their user to realize they can go and complain to the regulator regulating their companies when they leave their customers high and dry.

PayPal have an unfortunate history of seizing people's balances. So it's fine for small amounts, but you shouldn't trust it for large amounts if you can help it.

Zelle and Square's Cash App were not too late. They are both very popular in the US and by all accounts Venmo is the one trending downward in usage. The near future looks like Cash App in first and seconded by Zelle. You're just in a certain segment of the US where Venmo still has first place.

Here's some data from Google: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

Yes, absolutely aware of Zelle's growing popularity. I also tend to hear "Cash App" a lot more than in the past where "Venmo" was the only thing mentioned.

Still leaves Google', Apple's or Facebook's solutions in the dust.

Because this should have been part of the basic banking infrastructure (like it's done everywhere else), not something done by one company tying all the knots around

Here in Canada it’s crazy to hear about all the different apps and challenges in the states given we’ve had etransfer (email money to anyone it Canada from your bank) for nearly 20? years now I think. It just works.

In Sweden there is a single cross-platform payment app since >10 yrs called Swish which all the banks are connected to, and you transfer money by entering the recipients mobile phone number and the amount. No fees and the transfer is instant.

I guess it's luck that some countries happened to get the banks to agree to something like this at the particular time when the technology needed to support it just had matured (in Sweden a government supported e-ID had just become prevalent), and then it's kind of difficult for them to pull out and say "now everybody should pay for it".

Here you can pay with Swish in most stores as well, but the prevalent payment method there is still mastercard/visa I think.

Same in Norway, but product is called Vipps. It's slower to use for payment than contactless (you have to scan a QR-code if paying in shops), but it's so much easier for everything else than bank transfer and much cheaper and easier for pop-up shops than cash and any kind of card reader.

And of course Denmark has MobilePay, which unfortunately is owned by a single bank: Danske Bank. But I guess the other banks are fine with not competing against MobilePay.

That was true but isn't anymore. MobilePay is now part of a Norwegian company, Vipps, which is owned by a consortium of Norwegian banks (65% ownership), Danske Bank (25%), and Finnish OP Financial Group (10%).

We have something like that in the US and it’s called Zelle.

I’ve used it to transfer money to family, but friends sometimes use Venmo, Cash App, or others. I don’t think it ever gained critical mass.

Then it’s not like that. Swish is literally the best and only option and it is better than people exchanging cash.

In Singapore there’s also PayNow/PayLah

It’s like Swish because it’s the solution backed by the banks and you can pay someone using just their phone number.

Swish is just another proprietary solution though along with BankID. And BankID basically requires residency in Sweden (and much more), so it's not something you can install while visiting to pay at flea markets. Their only appeal is that they are ubiquitous.

I lived in Sweden as a resident for a period of time (less than the amount you are required to get a personnumber, one of the requirements for BankID) and sometimes not having Swish was a real hassle. Oftentimes it was with smaller mom-and-pop shops whose primary method of accepting payment was Swish. Carrying cash usually solved the problem, but not always. Transferring money to and from friends was also more difficult, either cash or Transferwise were used instead.

Even if I had been able to get a personnumber getting a BankID would have also been a real hassle - by law I believe Swedish banks have to grant me an account if I reside there and have a personnumber but as a US citizen they go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible due to the extremely onerous requirements that US requires foreign bank accounts comply with.

In practice signing up for a regular account w/ debit card, bankid etc as a US citizen isn't very different from signing up as a Sweden.

You'll run into issues trying to open an account for trading stocks though.

It does not require residency in Sweden. I left in 2011. I'm not in SPAR anymore, which restricts some rare things, but not BankID or Swish.

You cannot have BankID without having a personnummer, for which you need to be a resident or citizen (Swish uses BankID for identification for those who are not familiar with it).

Yeah, in Sweden you basically don't exist if you don't have a personnummer, yeah.

I'm a citizen and have a personnummer, but because I'm not a resident I'm not in SPAR. But I need to be neither in SPAR nor a resident for BankID or Swish.

I even managed to pick up a parcel my saying my personnummer, when they couldn't scan it off of my British driving license.

  > How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?

The fungability of currency, central to its invention and adoption in various forms, provides power to those who hold it. Removing the fungability transfers power to those who middle-man transactions. This became very obvious when large financial institutions refused to deal with e.g. Wikileaks or various porno and gambling websites.

There has been a constant trend throughout history minimize plebian agency and power. For a few decades after WWII the common citizen gained agency and now corporations and governments alike are clawing it back.

> How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?

If you ever have to ask this in America, the answer is almost always corporations and lobbying.

The companies are all doing a land grab because they think if they can get the whole pie it’ll be worth quite a bit.

Which makes it all a major cluster f. Same thing happened to messaging.

> On the Google side, there is (or was) Google Wallet (OG), Android Pay, Google Pay, gPay, now Google Wallet (new).

Don't forget Fitbit Pay! (As Google apparently did)

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

Other people may blur the boundaries, but Apple distinguishes them. Hardware: Apple TV. Software: tvOS. Subscription service: Apple TV+.

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

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.

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)

the name is a rip-off of Square's 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.

I wouldn’t really call it a rip-off. Cash is such a broad word.

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)

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.

- 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.

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.)

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.

Anecdata of course, but like I said, my existing Apple Cash already switched transparently at some point according to the Apple Wallet app.

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.

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.

You still have to "sign up" for Apple Cash though, which is a process that involves uploading your government identification.

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.

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.

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.)

Why is this on the front page..? Apple Cash has been around for years. It doesn't even look like they've added anything new unless I'm missing something?

Good point, here it is from last year https://web.archive.org/web/20210621194249/https://www.apple...

It's just a regular card:

    "Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. Learn more about the Terms and Conditions. Only available in the U.S. on eligible devices. To send and receive money with an Apple Cash account, you must be 18 and a U.S. resident. If you’re under 18, your family organizer can set up Apple Cash for you as part of their Apple Cash Family account. Security checks may require more time to make funds available. Apple Cash Family accounts can send or receive up to $2000 per transaction or within a seven-day period. Sending money from Wallet requires iOS 15.5 or later.

    An Apple Cash card is required to use Daily Cash, except if you do not have an Apple Cash card, in which case you can only apply your Daily Cash as a credit on your statement balance. The Apple Cash card is issued by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. See apple.com/apple-pay for more information. Daily Cash is earned on purchases after the transaction posts to your account. Actual posting times vary by merchant. Daily Cash is subject to exclusions, and additional details apply. See the Apple Card Customer Agreement for more information.

    Variable APRs range from 11.24% to 22.24% based on creditworthiness. Rates as of April 1, 2022.

    To access and use all the features of Apple Card, you must add Apple Card to Wallet on an iPhone or iPad with the latest version of iOS or iPadOS. Update to the latest version by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Tap Download and Install.

    Available for qualifying applicants in the United States.

    Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch"

Person to person cash transfers and family Apple Cash accounts are new features just recently enabled. I assume that's why it's in the news today.

I find it hilarious that at this Apple Canada help page:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207886

it says among other requirements for Apple Cash:

What you need

- Be at least 18 years old and live in the United States.

So typical of the Canadian UX for so many things :(

That’s the Canadian English version of a help page. The British English version says the same thing. It just means this product has launched in the US and has localized help content.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207886

To be clear, this is in practice basically a competitor for Venmo/Cash App/Paypal, but built into your iphone?

I only did a cursory glance at it but is there an Android app planned for this? In my experience, people want to send money to one another across different mobile OSes.

Yup, pretty much.

I can't imagine how Apple concluded that "It's exactly like Venmo in every way, but it only works for people with iPhones!" would make a particularly compelling value proposition.

That's basically iMessage vs. FB Messenger/WhatsApp/Signal/SMS.

Venmo not available to me in Europe. Can’t wait to have Apple Cash.

Like mobile money in Africa, various service providers will jump up to allow cross wallet transfers.

People use paypal for this in Europe

EDIT: Ok, maybe just in Germany.

And just to be clear: Paypal is an adverse company that tries to trick its users on every page.

I live in Northern Europe and I've never heard of anyone using Paypal for anything other than paying for things online. Each country has their own specific service that the majority uses (MobilePay, Siirto, Swish, etc).

It is pretty common in Germany (at least in my bubble) to transfer money via paypal to one another.

Does Germany not have fast bank transfers? In the UK, people used to use PayPal for this until the Faster Payments system came in, which meant that you can instantly transfer money to anyone with a UK bank account via your normal banking app.

I think it technically takes 24-48 hours to clear, but that doesn't tend to be an issue in practice. You'll get the push notification telling you the money has arrived and your balance will update in seconds.

You have fast transfers in Germany, but it is new, an extra box to tick, normal online banking is horrible UX and you have to know the IBAN of the account. Giving someone my email is way easier.

Plus it costs extra and many banks don't support it.

It's a mess.

I wish this was faster, imagine paying online by scanning a QR code with your banking app. There would be non risk of chargebacks for merchants and fees could be basically zero.

I don't know anyone using Paypal for this scenario. However, people do use Wise and Revolut.

In my country (in EU) everyone uses it. Friends, colleagues, family, everyone. That part is great. But the app sucks. I wish PayPal would fix their app. Animations are buggy, it's slow (not really slow but slow enough to show a loading spinner every time) and navigating through the app is hard.

In Finland, I've only seen people use MobilePay

I did have to use Paypal recently to pay for HBO Max, because they would not accept debit cards for whatever reason, and I lost my patience with their support. You are right, the Paypal app is really bad.

You should give Wise and/or Revolut a try. The apps are way better, and probably one of the best features both have is virtual cards (Revolut has also a one-time card that is automatically destroyed after use). Note that you also get physical cards with both. I think Revolut has a few more features that Wise lacks, like travel and device insurance, but for the financial part, the features are nearly identical. Also, currency exchange rates are way better than traditional banks.

The compelling value proposition is users trust Apple a shitload more than random startups and have enough apple user friends to make it work.

The sad part is that these apps are needed at all. In Australia the government just regulated that all banks must support free and instant money transfers and that email addresses and phone numbers be supported as addresses to send to.

So if your friend wants to send you money, you type their email on any bank app and it pops up with their legal name confirming you have the right person. The money shows up instantly.

They don't release Android apps, therefore you still need to use Venmo and Cash App if you want to send money to someone. So people aren't going to use this over Venmo, Cash App or PayPal.

Google Pay supports iOS which is why it used over Apple Pay in countries where iPhones aren't the dominate mobile OS.

I mean... I singlehandedly disprove your claim. I use Apple Cash very frequently, even in cases where both parties have other apps on their phones. IMO they don't need to remove Venmo or Cash App from the market in order to have a meaningful product that adds value for their customers.

For what it's worth, other big companies are building their own verticals, like Messenger Payments and Google Pay.

Venmo has continually failed at privacy: https://www.legalreader.com/venmos-at-it-again-privacy-issue...

Privacy is an area where Apple tries to differentiate. It’s not great that this is Apple only, but it’s also nice that it just works.

I've never used Venmo since I thought that it made your transactions public by default. Maybe this isn't even true, but I think it is and that just seemed so insane I didn't want to go anywhere near it.

This will likely be like Facetime. I don't think Apple typically cares about this use case, just like nobody is going to use an Apple Card on an iPhone. This is targetted towards iPhone households (which seem to be rather common, as anecdotal as it may sound, I can count a dozen households where nobody has Android, and this meets their need).

I would use Zelle for cross device transfer or any of the other apps, it's not like we have a shortage of them. Although I agree it would be good if we had less of them to need to use.

I'm sensing from your comment that you aren't aware that they made Facetime cross-OS. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212619

I was not aware! Thanks for that link, everyone from my wife's family has iOS but my mom is still on Android, this is useful to know!

> just like nobody is going to use an Apple Card on an iPhone

Is this sentence what you actually meant to say? It makes sense if the last noun is "Android".

Oops! You are correct, I meant to say Android.

This is a rebranding of Apple Pay Cash, which launched in 2014. Not sure if there's much in the ways of new features.

Yes, Apple has had this for awhile, but apparently there was an underlying change in April when the service shifted from Discover to Visa [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Apple_Cash

Really silly and not related, but I've tried half a dozen of these things for managing my kid's allowance and general spending, and they have all been a PITA. Either my kids can't sign up without a drivers license and credit check, or they can't send money to me or between themselves, or something else entirely. Maybe Apple has fixed this, but I do remember also trying Cash, and there was some deal breaker for my use.

Anyway, I ended up just writing a Matrix bot* that's a glorified spreadsheet. It's 600 lines of Rust, or probably 100 of Python. Works a treat!

* https://github.com/pkulak/bots/blob/main/src/bots/money.rs

Have you not tried Greenlight? My 3 kids have had greenlight cards since they were 12. The mobile app UX isn’t great but it checks all the boxes on features.

Few products have made our personal lives so much easier. Not having to ever get/give cash for them is amazing.

Yeah, that was one of the first. But my kids couldn’t send me money, which sucks cus it’s my CC in Steam/Nintendo/etc, and I don’t want to have to add 2 more everywhere.

We have our children pay us using a card payment terminal. Ours is from SumUp, I know plenty of other brands do them too. I'm happy to eat the transaction costs for the ease of use.

A terminal should work with any product that functions as a debit card, pre-pay or not. As it happens, my children do have actual current accounts behind the cards they use. But it seems like UK banking is becoming less willing to issue full-spec debit cards to younger teens :(.

Not sure about the age requirements or other account specifics, etc. But it seems like you should be able to use Apple Cash for allowances and such

From the FAQ: >How do I add money to my Apple Cash card? >If you’re under 18, money is added to your Apple Cash card only when someone sends you money.

spriggy

Does Matrix have a money feature (excuse my ignorance), which can be controlled by bots?

Oh, sorry, no. Matrix is just the UI for a bot that does all its own accounting.

I use a Capital One MONEY account for my kid. It's a pretty standard fee free checking account for him (minus the actual paper checks) but it allows me to see what he's doing, add/remove money, and turn his debit card on/off as I wish.

New marketing site for Apple Cash? Looks like they also added https://www.apple.com/wallet/ and https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/.

Hasn’t Apple Cash been around for a few years now? What prompted this post?

I’m not sure I understand what’s new.

Apple has had Cash for a long time (the Apple Card uses it for card rewards).

Ah. I see now. This is a specialization of Apple Pay, which has been around a while.

What are the tax implications of this, if any? I know people in extended families regularly sending money between themselves. Can they expect the IRS knocking on the door and blaming them for hiding income?

I am worried about them now. They will find this super convenient and will use it from day one. Hope this service is private.

>I know people in extended families regularly sending money between themselves

Not a lawyer but I remember reading that the IRS (or equivalent) would be watching for patterns (large amounts/frequent transfers in just below a threshold etc across different sources -- bank accounts etc) . If there is probable cause, they might have to get a subpoena. This app is just one more source for them to confirm/deny wrongdoing.

I’m assuming you’re referring to gifts, not the transfer of money for goods or services (i.e. one person paying for everyone’s lunch and then getting repaid)

If so, then this page may answer your question. Basically unless you’re transferring over $22k in total in a year using Apple Cash, you’re fine.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Yep, they're not penny-pinching each other. As you said, sometimes someone ends up paying for long family dinners thrice in a row but they're cool about it and somebody else just wires the person $400 a week or so later.

Multiply such occurrences several times a month and you get the idea.

Thanks for the link, it's helpful.

Can I send US$ to someone in a different country? How does that work?

You can't, it's only available in the United States

Non-starter then

From the FAQ: "send and receive money in Messages or Wallet. The money you receive appears on your Apple Cash card in Wallet."

Can I get the money out of Apple Cash, except for spending it via Apple Pay? Can I withdraw the money to a bank account? If not, I find it a bit limiting. If someone sends me money via Paypal, I can transfer it to my bank account and withdraw it from an ATM, or use it to buy stocks, or donate it to some organization that doesn't take Apple Pay payments...

Yes, you can transfer it to your bank. Works just like Venmo or PayPal

The article answers your question (yes, you can) and links to a support article with more information: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207882

> Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank

Never heard of Green Dot Bank. They seem to have these banks listed under them:

"GO2bank, GoBank and Bonneville Bank".

I assume that Green Dot Bank isn't holding the money itself but passing it on to a bigger bank. Anyone know who's actually behind this ?

Edit: I think maybe Green Dot is holding the money themselves on this are they a well known bank in the USA ?

Never heard of them. They are not a well-known retail bank.

Edit - Looks like they do pre-paid credit cards, which explain why I’ve never heard of them. Been around since 1999.

Green Dot is a prepaid debit card marketer and servicer. Green Dot Bank....is a bank that is owned by Green Dot. Green Dot has some products on different banks...like Metabank.

Green Dot is or was the dominant prepaid card sold in Walmart and all major grocery stores. They offer a Rapid Reload service where you can bring cash to a Walmart register and have it loaded into a prepaid card.

They basically serve people who have been ejected from the banking system. One of their main products was an anonymous card that could be reloaded and used to transfer money. A favorite of prostitutes and other illegal services that was eventually snuffed out by the banks because of KYC (know your customer) violations.

People would load money onto the card and just give it to someone else or transfer between them. All anon.

How did they make money in this ?

Most banks wouldn't work in this manner due to high risk.

Most banks taking this stance leaves the entire market for others. It is fuelled by fees. Green Dot fees are quite high. What you say is true, though. I was with an established prepaid company (acquired by GD) that got dropped by a bank or two.

The link to the 'Apple Cash setup support page' is a 307 temporary redirect to the Apple Pay page for me. Not sure if this is due to locale, I don't have Apple Cash in my Apple Wallet settings as well...

Isn't this just the same as a virtual pre-paid credit card, which every bank offers nowadays? Except, perhaps this will allow Apple to take our money and use it to invest.

They can't invest your money. The bank has to ensure a liquid balance for each person. Apple has zero control over that.

Consumers also enjoy CFPB protection/regulation with this product.

Apple calls Green Dot APIs for servicing and the backing account(s) is at Green Dot Bank.

Launched 2019. Still no sign of it in the UK

There is a lot of competition in the uk/eu I guess. Everyone has Revolut etc already.

> Still no sign of it in the UK

To be fair, it would be borderline pointless here. Bank transfers are instant and free in almost all cases, and competition from the challenger banks has made the process a lot smoother in the legacy banks’ apps too.

I think the only USP Apple’s offering would have here is nice iMessage integration.

looks like a digital debit "gift card" system.

Smart. Its a clever way to deal with legal boundaries on transferring money. Should be interesting to see them get it past Australian regulations.

Not sure about AU, but in the US, Apple is a registered money transmitter[0] because of this service. Doesn't seem like they are avoiding anything compliance wise.

[0] https://dfpi.ca.gov/money-transmitter-division/directory-of-...

USA exclusive

how is the money transfer happening ? anyone know ?

is this VISA CardPay ?

The cards are issued by Green Dot Bank

interesting to see Apple venture into SERVICES rather than PRODUCTS. it’s typical “milking” strategy: get as much as you can from the success of iphone before it’s too late. as long as these services keep bringing cash to the company, I don’t think Apple will introduce yet a new category of products, such as Apple Glasses.

I don’t think that theory will pan out. The AR product is expected this year, with VR to follow.

I think they’ll keep introducing new services and products. It’s actually in Apple’s best interest to venture into as many different services, products, and new revenue streams as humanly possible, so that Apple can continue growing. Stagnation will lead to unhappy shareholders…

You can check the participating banks worldwide here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204916

Just want to post it since Apple kinda buried it deep down.

That's the list for Apple Pay, not Apple Cash. Apple Cash is US only.

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