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Apple Cash

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Re: Apple Cash

#71

Post by Thlom »

l33tman wrote: post #69
ryandrake wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 shoul…

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…

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.

Re: Apple Cash

#72

Post by dotancohen »

ryandrake wrote: post #20
user_named wrote: post #14

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?

> 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 shoul…

  > 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.

Re: Apple Cash

#73

Post by drclau »

pretext-1 wrote: post #59
drclau wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Apple Cash

#74

Post by ChrisRR »

ryandrake wrote: post #20
user_named wrote: post #14

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?

> 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 shoul…

> 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.

Re: Apple Cash

#75

Post by lou1306 »

ryandrake wrote: post #20
user_named wrote: post #14

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?

> 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 shoul…

> 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)

Re: Apple Cash

#76

Post by kalleboo »

user_named wrote: post #14

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?

- 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.

Re: Apple Cash

#77

Post by ChrisRR »

Zanni wrote: post #63
gnicholas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Apple Cash

#78

Post by kibibyte »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #47
cromka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 beca…

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?

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.)

Re: Apple Cash

#79

Post by freyr »

l33tman wrote: post #69
ryandrake wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 shoul…

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…

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.

Re: Apple Cash

#80

Post by the_other »

buro9 wrote: post #57
oezi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 availabl…

> 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).

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