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Apple announces Apple Card credit card

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Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#471

Post by angott »

astura wrote: post #410
microdrum wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2% cash back on Apple Pay, 3% cash back on Apple products, and 1% cash back on non-Apple Pay, non-Apple products. Do you know a better card that always gives 2% cash back, no cap?

Fidelity Visa is 2% on everything, no cap, no annual fee. Citi DoubleCash is 2% on everything, dunno if there's a cap, no annual fee. (you have to redeem into a bank account, not as statement credit, to get the full 2%) USAA Limitless is 2.5% cash back on everything, no cap. (military only, no longer available), no annual fee. If you have enough cash invested with Merrill Edge ($100,000, including IRAs) the Bank of A…

As someone living in Canada, I see these offers and it sincerely makes me cry. The best no-fee cards here have 0.5% cash back. For anything more than 1%, you need to pay an annual fee of at least $99.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#472

Post by eridius »

deepGem wrote: post #279
zaphirplane wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how you can challenge a fraudulent transaction when that information is missing

They said that the information is on your device, not on Apple servers. So I presume that they/GS can extract this information from the device under a valid legal claim.

Apple can't extract information from your device, even under subpoena. They'd have to push an OS update that explicitly changes what they do to start sending that info to Apple, but the US legal system doesn't allow the government to compel them to make that kind of change.

That said, if the data is available in your iCloud backup in a form that can be read by other devices, Apple can presumably extract that data under subpoena. If it's in your iCloud backup but encrypted with a per-device key (like your non-iCloud keychain entries), Apple cannot extract that because decrypting the backup (which they can do) isn't sufficient to decrypt this per-device-encrypted data.

All that said, if the government wants to know your spending history, it would be simpler just to subpoena Goldman Sachs.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#473

Post by jumbopapa »

davidcollantes wrote: post #368
vinay427 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, but with caveats you can also get more than 2% back on every purchase and 4-5% on many purchases. For many people, that's easily worth it and I wouldn't settle for a 2% back card.

Which card gives you 4-5% cash back?

Well if you want to maximize rewards you could use:

- Chase Freedom / Discover It (Quarterly 5% categories (examples: Wholesale, Gas, Grocery, Department Stores, Mobile Pay, Home Improvement, etc.))

- Uber Visa (4% Dining, 3% Travel, 2% Online Purchases, 1% everything else)

- American Express Blue Cash Everyday (3% Grocery, 2% Gas/Department Stores, 1% everything else)

- Citi Doublecash (2% everything)

- Costco Visa (4% Gas, 3% Travel/Dining, 2% Costco, 1% everything else)

- Amazon Prime Visa (5% Amazon, 2% Dining, Grocery, Pharmacy, 1% everything else)

These are just the cards I use right now. There are no annual fees, although some require membership like Costco and Amazon. Pay your balance in full every month and it's a much better option than debit. There's a bunch of different ways to maximize rewards. See /r/churning [1] for more info.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/churning

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#474

Post by r00fus »

jl6 wrote: post #431
ceejayoz wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rewards may be real, but so are the cost increases the merchants gradually put in place to offset them.

We can’t pay merchants less by paying cash, so we may as well try to grab a slice of the fee via the reward. 2% sounds pretty good.

Some local merchants offer bonuses for cash usage. Of course, those only take Debit cards if not cash.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#475

Post by ams6110 »

ar0 wrote: post #244
zaphirplane wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how you can challenge a fraudulent transaction when that information is missing

My understanding was that Goldman Sachs will have that information and they will be responsible for fraud prevention etc. -- they just won't share it with Apple.

But will Goldman know who the consumer is? Or is it just an opaque identity that they use to handle the accounts for Apple?

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#476

Post by baddox »

isostatic wrote: post #250
throwawaysea wrote: post #172

I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. How long before the opaque governance of the App Store is applied to their payments offering? How long before activists start making this a new vector for deplatforming? Apple also announced a news offering ( https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-news-plus ) and I think the same concerns apply there.

It's an inevitable end state of capitalism - large companies merge and use monopolitic tactics up and down the chain. That's why we have democratically accountable regulators

Here's a gut check question: Do you think that the average individual politician/regulator is more or less influenced by the desires of mega-corporations than the average individual voter?

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#477

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #406
ralusek wrote: post #189

Earlier 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…

We need a post-office bank and payment processor, which will then be legally subject to the First Amendment.

> We need a post-office bank and payment processor, which will then be legally subject to the First Amendment.

Postal money orders already exists, and are exactly as expensive and inconvenient as you would expect.

The actual problem is KYC laws that require payment processors to do the job of the police and refuse service to customers under purposely vague corporate policies without due process, instead of having the police do that job and only have payment processing service denied with a court order and an opportunity to contest it under the law.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#478

Post by arcticbull »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #406
ralusek wrote: post #189

Earlier 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…

We need a post-office bank and payment processor, which will then be legally subject to the First Amendment.

Postal banking is awesome for a lot of reasons. For one, post offices are pretty evenly distributed throughout cities including in low-income neighborhoods where banks tend not to be. There's a lot of precedent including the UK (https://www.postoffice.co.uk/everydaybanking). I hadn't considered first-amendment though, very interesting.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#479

Post by eridius »

Liquix wrote: post #274
eridius wrote: post #213

Earlier 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…

I believe this whole thing is designed to promote adoption of Apple Pay. Apple already gets a kickback on all Apple Pay purchases, so they don't even need to get any kickback on physical card purchases when the higher rewards for Apple Pay means card owners will push for better Apple Pay support.

Previously with other cards, using Apple Pay is just a matter of convenience for the customer. With the Apple Card, it's a matter of getting more cash back, so consumers are now financially motivated to prefer vendors that support Apple Pay.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#480

Post by arcticbull »

astura wrote: post #350
zaphirplane wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how you can challenge a fraudulent transaction when that information is missing

Read here to learn about credit card partners, and how it works: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to... Essentially, in this case, the underlying bank (Goldman Sachs) handles all the finances and the partner (Apple) lends their name/brand and receives a small kickback on card activities.

Yeah, its basically an Apple co-branded card with some neat UI on top of it.
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