Matthew Panzarino unearths a raft of tiny details on Apple Card, beyond the major points that have been floating around.
A few nuggets:
The physical Apple Card does not support contactless payments. If you’ve got a tap terminal, you’re supposed to use Apple Pay.
And:
The physical Apple Card, of course, has no number. The app displays the last 4 digits of the card number that is on the mag stripe of the card only, you never see the full card number. Instead, Apple provides a virtual card number and virtual confirmation code (CVV) for the card in the app. You can use this for non-Apple Pay purchases online or over the phone. This number is semi-permanent, meaning that you can keep using it as long as you want.
This last is an important point. The number on the physical card’s mag stripe is different than the number in the Wallet app.
About the phrase “semi-permanent”:
You can hit a button to regenerate the PAN (primary account number), providing you with a new credit card number at any time. This is great for situations where you are forced to tell someone your credit card number but do not necessarily completely trust the recipient.
Fantastic approach.
Lots more detail in Matthew’s TechCrunch post. Great read.
This part made me chuckle. “..but if you were to switch to Android you could continue using your physical card and paying your bill — but without the majority of the cash back or security benefits why would you?” I can see some Android switchers thinking they no longer have to pay their bill.
Apple buried the lede by bragging about an industry-standard APR and etched titanium. The ability to change the PAN is one of the things I’d have wanted to hear about first; a genuine security feature that truly benefits consumers.
I know, right? To me that may be the biggest wow factor.
I guess not enough people have had their credit accounts hijacked by a compromised gas-station card-reader.
They certainly have my attention now,
Anything that will increase security I am all for. This is a big one.
I went from, “maybe I’ll get one”, to “yup, I am getting one”, right there.