Apple Unveils New Credit Card

WSJ: 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. James Bond might be a Black Card guy, but Q would def­i­nitely use an Apple Card

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

If you have the Apple Card, you get 2% back on pur­chases you make us­ing Apple Pay—3% when you use the card to buy apps, movies and de­vices from Apple. The re­wards ap­pear daily in a digi­tal Apple Cash card, which you can use with Apple Pay or to pay down the credit card’s bal­ance

How­ever, if you go around swip­ing the Apple Card like a reg­u­lar credit card, you only get 1%

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.

Buy­ing stuff with the Apple Card is… just like buy­ing with any other credit card. You can swipe the card, type in your card num­ber (which isn’t on the card, but in­stead is hid­den three taps deep in a set­tings menu) or tap with your phone or watch; mer­chants process it like a stan­dard Mast­ercard.

Apple says 65% of all U.S. re­tail lo­ca­tions now sup­port its credit card

The Apple Card al­most turns the Wal­let app into a great bud­get­ing tool. Al­most. It cat­e­go­rizes your ex­penses by day, type and mer­chant, so you can see where your money is go­ing. But since Apple doesn’t in­te­grate the card with other credit cards in your Apple Pay ac­count, you can’t see all your spend­ing in one place. Nor can you ex­port your Apple Card trans­ac­tions and man­age your bud­get else­where—such as into a more pow­er­ful app like Mint or YNAB

Pay­ing your bill is eas­ier with the Apple Card than most oth­ers. When you open the Wal­let app and tap on your card, a box on the dash­board shows when your pay­ment is due—which is al­ways the last day of the month. (If you for­get, Apple will send you push no­ti­fi­ca­tions to re­mind you.) Tap to pay, and a col­or­ful cir­cle prompts you to pay your en­tire bill. Lessen your pay­ment by drag­ging around the cir­cle—and watch the cir­cle’s color be­come less friendly as you do so. It tells you ex­actly how much in­ter­est you’ll pay on what­ever is left over. This kind of trans­parency is both rare and ap­pre­ci­ated

The Apple Card is mar­keted as more se­cure and pri­vate than most. Apple says it never col­lects your pur­chase his­tory or per­sonal data—all the trans­ac­tion and spend­ing data is gen­er­ated lo­cally on your phone. Gold­man Sachs does col­lect and store that data, but it promises never to share or sell it. When you buy some­thing with Apple Pay, all that’s sent out is a sim­ple to­ken say­ing you’re a real user, so mer­chants don’t get your info or card num­ber

If your credit card gets lost or your num­ber gets stolen, you can get a new one with a cou­ple of taps in the Wal­let app

Apple says it’s look­ing at ways to fur­ther help users man­age their fi­nan­cial health

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