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Apple Card Makes Credit Cool
Naysayers doubt the success of the Apple Card, but they doubted the AirPods too
If you’d asked Apple customers late last year what they were most looking forward to from the company that regularly flirts with a $1 trillion market cap, they’d likely have mentioned a new iPhone, an updated MacBook, or the (now shelved) AirPower wireless charging mat. It would have been incredibly left-field for anyone to say “a credit card,” yet here we are.
Apple married the contactless payment standard with two-factor authentication when it first released Apple Pay in 2014. Apple later expanded into the peer-to-peer (P2P) payment market with Apple Cash (the artist formerly known as Apple Pay Cash) and now continues its foray into financial services with Apple Card.
Apple Card was first teased on March 26, 2019, at a “Special Event,” where it was held up as the ideal credit card for the digital age. According to the Apple Card product page on Apple.com:
“It represents all the things Apple stands for. Like simplicity, transparency, and privacy.”
The privacy aspect, in particular, is bolstered by the following:
- The digital card is housed in Apple’s secure mobile payment service and digital wallet (Apple Pay).
- The physical card contains no sensitive or identifying information beyond the cardholder’s first and last name.
The card number, expiration date, and security code are visible only from within the Wallet app or Settings on an iPhone or iPad. Access to this information is protected by Touch ID or Face ID, which are also used to authorize Apple Card payments made using Apple Pay.
Despite being touted as “a credit card created by Apple, not a bank,” Apple Card is issued in partnership with one of the most prominent investment banks and financial service providers in the world, Goldman Sachs. So prominent in that realm, in fact, that this is the first time Goldman Sachs has ever issued consumer credit cards.
The absence of all but the…
