Today was really disappointing. Takeaway: Apple spent untold shareholder dollars to pay Oprah to say "Appllllllllllle!"
Apple announces Apple Card credit card
321–330 of 778 posts
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I'm so sick of businesses relying on people not cancelling to exist, and thereby making their calcellation process as time consuming and obtuse as possible to reduce consumers chances of cancelling. Consumers should be able to just NOT pay for a service, and then it's on the service-provider to turn off the customer's access. I can't tell you the amount of services I've past up on simply because I don't want to…
I found Spotify cancellation process surprisingly refreshing. Just a big giant cancel button with a confirmation. Done.
Same with Sling and Britbox - no fuss cancellations all online. Was impressed.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#3232% if you use Apple Pay, and 1% if you use the physical card. That's not a very competitive offering.
I think the whole idea of "Cash back" is insane. Someone , i.e. the consumer, is ultimately paying for these rewards, whether it is airline miles or cashback % or whatever. It is a self-propelling idea that would be almost impossible to kill because doing so would make your credit card offering less competitive. It is also self-propelling from the consumer end. If you don't take advantage of these rewards, you're pay…
Agreed, I don't think it is a coincidence that here in Finland VISA/MC credit cards don't offer cashback and the merchant fees are much lower than US (Nets offers 0.31% for EU consumer VISA/MC debit cards and 0.9% for EU consumer VISA/MC credit cards).
Though I guess lower fraud rate due to chip-and-pin requirement also plays a part.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#324Maybe Tim Cook picked this strategy up over dinner with Trump.
Trump - "And all these people lined up to pay me to put my name on their products".
Tim Cook - Silently taking notes
Trump - So, I was telling you about ... Tim, Tim Apple?
Tim Cook - Will be back later, on a call with Goldman + Mastercard.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look no further than the recent issue where Patreon competitor Subscribestar had payment processors Stripe and PayPal stop processing their payments for _political_ disagreements with the purported beneficiaries of the donations through the platform. PayPal said that it was actually one of the underlying payment processors, and it was suspected to be MasterCard. That incident was the first time I've ever taken the ne…
The CC networks are known cave to political pressure to shut down certain merchants. Apple is likely no better or worse here. example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/caving-government-pres...
> Apple is likely no better or worse here.
Apple will be piggybacking off of MasterCard's network.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused. The Apple card is a MasterCard.
The original question: How long until these companies start skipping payment processors like Visa and Mastercard? Should that come to pass, the Apple card becomes...an Apple card.
I see. I guess it seems fundamental to me that a credit card would have these properties -- even though it's not necessary to actually fulfill the role of a credit card -- which is just to provide credit.
The two seem intertwined, even though they aren't. I just assumed Apple -- if they became a payment processor -- would still provide those protections.
If they didn't, which I see is maybe what the OP was alluding to, why would anyone use the card?
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#327Just allow me to create as many 'virtual' credit cards from a single card and that's enough. Every single provider that promised that feature has either underwhelmed, or gone out of business.
Revolut offers this. I can create virtual cards and one-time-use cards.
Only on their Premium plan. It's also sad that they seem to be the one of the few companies outside the US that does this.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#328With the rise of smartphone payments like Samsung Pay, Android Pay and Apple Pay , is there even a need for credit cards? How long until these companies start skipping payment processors like Visa and Mastercard and take the whole pie?
I don't live in a tech hub city but in all my shopping I have never seen anyone use one of the Apple/Samsung payment methods where I live. Even when I spent months in Silicon Valley I can count the number of times I saw it used on one hand.
Apple Pay (and Google Pay) penetration in the U.K. is nearly universal.
We have had very good support for contactless payments for a long time, something that Apple/Google Pay will both fall back to if necessary. No one blocks them. Charges are capped in the EU, and low, so retailers are onboard. Add to that the fact that cash usage is declining fast and some places are going card only (London public transport being most notable), it’s everywhere.
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#329Just allow me to create as many 'virtual' credit cards from a single card and that's enough. Every single provider that promised that feature has either underwhelmed, or gone out of business.
Did you try Citi cards? I've been using one for years and I think at most I had about 15 virtual account numbers on it (but I do try to keep things tidy generally).
Unfortunately the only approach that I know of with Citi is this Flash-based app, which is increasingly getting painful to use on desktop browsers and seems impossible on mobile. Have you found a more modern approach to using them?
Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple said they've engineered the service such that Apple does not know what you're purchasing or even what vendors you're shopping at. If Apple doesn't know this, they can't very well apply arbitrary rules to it.
What do they gain from offering the card if they are not harvesting transaction data? Is it possible that this is some legal gymnastics (i.e. Goldman-Sachs receives the 'Apple doesn't know' data and promptly send it over to them under an opaque 'we share information with our affiliates' clause)? It does seem like a lot of work and potential risk if the sole purpose is to increase user dependency on the Apple ecosyste…
It's a foot in in the global financing system. Billion people buy their products, and given their price, I'm ready to bet that the number of people who finance their purchase instead of buying with cash is not insignificant. That's lots of interest payments.
Once they have a foothold in the finance sector they can start financing their own devices and capture that revenue, instead of letting it slip to third parties.
This makes incredible sense. Lots of large companies have financing services that are very profitable. Finance is one place where it's much easier to enter than self driving cars.
Now I'm a bit sad I don't own any apple stocks.
With this game plan they can increase their leverage in the consumer market enormously.