Apple Cash

https://www.apple.com/apple-cash/

by jeanniesarah • 4 years ago

167 197 4 years ago

jibbers• 4 years ago

New marketing site for Apple Cash? Looks like they also added https://www.apple.com/wallet/ and https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/.

lawgimenez• 4 years ago

You can check the participating banks worldwide here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204916

Just want to post it since Apple kinda buried it deep down.

george_perez• 4 years ago

That's the list for Apple Pay, not Apple Cash. Apple Cash is US only.

pkulak3• 4 years ago

Really silly and not related, but I've tried half a dozen of these things for managing my kid's allowance and general spending, and they have all been a PITA. Either my kids can't sign up without a drivers license and credit check, or they can't send money to me or between themselves, or something else entirely. Maybe Apple has fixed this, but I do remember also trying Cash, and there was some deal breaker for my use.

Anyway, I ended up just writing a Matrix bot* that's a glorified spreadsheet. It's 600 lines of Rust, or probably 100 of Python. Works a treat!

* https://github.com/pkulak/bots/blob/main/src/bots/money.rs

callmeed• 4 years ago

Have you not tried Greenlight? My 3 kids have had greenlight cards since they were 12. The mobile app UX isn’t great but it checks all the boxes on features.

Few products have made our personal lives so much easier. Not having to ever get/give cash for them is amazing.

pkulak3• 4 years ago

Yeah, that was one of the first. But my kids couldn’t send me money, which sucks cus it’s my CC in Steam/Nintendo/etc, and I don’t want to have to add 2 more everywhere.

CompleteWalker• 4 years ago

Not sure about the age requirements or other account specifics, etc. But it seems like you should be able to use Apple Cash for allowances and such

From the FAQ: >How do I add money to my Apple Cash card? >If you’re under 18, money is added to your Apple Cash card only when someone sends you money.

shearnie• 4 years ago

spriggy

oezi5• 4 years ago

Does Matrix have a money feature (excuse my ignorance), which can be controlled by bots?

pkulak3• 4 years ago

Oh, sorry, no. Matrix is just the UI for a bot that does all its own accounting.

technothrasher• 4 years ago

I use a Capital One MONEY account for my kid. It's a pretty standard fee free checking account for him (minus the actual paper checks) but it allows me to see what he's doing, add/remove money, and turn his debit card on/off as I wish.

senectus1• 4 years ago

looks like a digital debit "gift card" system.

Smart. Its a clever way to deal with legal boundaries on transferring money. Should be interesting to see them get it past Australian regulations.

iancarroll• 4 years ago

Not sure about AU, but in the US, Apple is a registered money transmitter[0] because of this service. Doesn't seem like they are avoiding anything compliance wise.

[0] https://dfpi.ca.gov/money-transmitter-division/directory-of-...

behnamoh• 4 years ago

interesting to see Apple venture into SERVICES rather than PRODUCTS. it’s typical “milking” strategy: get as much as you can from the success of iphone before it’s too late. as long as these services keep bringing cash to the company, I don’t think Apple will introduce yet a new category of products, such as Apple Glasses.

1123581321• 4 years ago

I don’t think that theory will pan out. The AR product is expected this year, with VR to follow.

relyks• 4 years ago

I think they’ll keep introducing new services and products. It’s actually in Apple’s best interest to venture into as many different services, products, and new revenue streams as humanly possible, so that Apple can continue growing. Stagnation will lead to unhappy shareholders…

braingenious• 4 years ago

To be clear, this is in practice basically a competitor for Venmo/Cash App/Paypal, but built into your iphone?

I only did a cursory glance at it but is there an Android app planned for this? In my experience, people want to send money to one another across different mobile OSes.

warning26• 4 years ago

Yup, pretty much.

I can't imagine how Apple concluded that "It's exactly like Venmo in every way, but it only works for people with iPhones!" would make a particularly compelling value proposition.

ceeplusplus• 4 years ago

That's basically iMessage vs. FB Messenger/WhatsApp/Signal/SMS.

Biologist123• 4 years ago

Venmo not available to me in Europe. Can’t wait to have Apple Cash.

Like mobile money in Africa, various service providers will jump up to allow cross wallet transfers.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

The compelling value proposition is users trust Apple a shitload more than random startups and have enough apple user friends to make it work.

The sad part is that these apps are needed at all. In Australia the government just regulated that all banks must support free and instant money transfers and that email addresses and phone numbers be supported as addresses to send to.

So if your friend wants to send you money, you type their email on any bank app and it pops up with their legal name confirming you have the right person. The money shows up instantly.

shrimpx2• 4 years ago

For what it's worth, other big companies are building their own verticals, like Messenger Payments and Google Pay.

muraiki• 4 years ago

Venmo has continually failed at privacy: https://www.legalreader.com/venmos-at-it-again-privacy-issue...

Privacy is an area where Apple tries to differentiate. It’s not great that this is Apple only, but it’s also nice that it just works.

mhb• 4 years ago

I've never used Venmo since I thought that it made your transactions public by default. Maybe this isn't even true, but I think it is and that just seemed so insane I didn't want to go anywhere near it.

giancarlostoro4• 4 years ago

This will likely be like Facetime. I don't think Apple typically cares about this use case, just like nobody is going to use an Apple Card on an iPhone. This is targetted towards iPhone households (which seem to be rather common, as anecdotal as it may sound, I can count a dozen households where nobody has Android, and this meets their need).

I would use Zelle for cross device transfer or any of the other apps, it's not like we have a shortage of them. Although I agree it would be good if we had less of them to need to use.

omni• 4 years ago

I'm sensing from your comment that you aren't aware that they made Facetime cross-OS. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212619

samatman• 4 years ago

just like nobody is going to use an Apple Card on an iPhone

Is this sentence what you actually meant to say? It makes sense if the last noun is "Android".

user_named2• 4 years ago

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?

duskwuff2• 4 years ago

Why can't I Pay with the Cash in my Wallet. Or can I?

You can. In fact, if you're using Apple Card, the cash-back rewards show up as Apple Cash.

user_named2• 4 years ago

Yeah I was guessing that's possible. I mean that the separation of these into separate products seems confusing when they're actually one.

ryandrake• 4 years ago

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 should be using, or what each one deliberately can't do. Some handset makers have their own apps: Samsung Pay, for example. Then, there's the individual apps: Venmo, PayPal, Square Cash, Zelle, Xoom...

A web search shows there are probably a dozen more, all incompatible with each other. It's like VHS vs Betamax and HD-DVD vs. BluRay all over again, but instead with 20 different formats. How has this industry so royally fucked up something that should be pretty straightforward?

Krisjohn• 4 years ago

Because money.

buro93• 4 years ago

Google Pay ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... ) can store my Tate and National Trust membership cards, my EU COVID passport (proof of vaccination and booster), as well as boarding passes. And it's smart enough to expire out cards from the pass as expired memberships or flights that have flown.

Anything that can be represented in a barcode or QR code can be stored in it. Which of course turns out to be a lot of things, payments are just one part of it.

Edit: added link, but it's preinstalled on most modern Android devices.

cromka3• 4 years ago

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 because they had no institutional support behind them like Zelle. Lastly, Apple Cash, while particularly convenient, IMHO just did not advertise it well enough. Also, being limited to Apple devices only, kinda misses the point of making payments easy, since you can't be expected to always remember/check which device does your payee have.

Most other service you mentioned were just regular payment processing intermediaries, not p2p solutions like Venmo/Squarecash/Apple Cash.

It's a mess indeed, but at the end of the day, from my experience, Venmo in the US still is the go-to method, seconded only by Zelle.

katbyte• 4 years ago

Here in Canada it’s crazy to hear about all the different apps and challenges in the states given we’ve had etransfer (email money to anyone it Canada from your bank) for nearly 20? years now I think. It just works.

l33tman• 4 years ago

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 (in Sweden a government supported e-ID had just become prevalent), and then it's kind of difficult for them to pull out and say "now everybody should pay for it".

Here you can pay with Swish in most stores as well, but the prevalent payment method there is still mastercard/visa I think.

dotancohen• 4 years ago

  > 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.

ChrisRR2• 4 years ago

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.

lou1306• 4 years ago

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)

gnicholas• 4 years ago

Agreed. It's like the Apple TV moniker, which refers to hardware, software, and a subscription service.

Zanni• 4 years ago

Other people may blur the boundaries, but Apple distinguishes them. Hardware: Apple TV. Software: tvOS. Subscription service: Apple TV+.

bibinou2• 4 years ago

the name is a rip-off of Square's Cash App: https://cash.app Wallet is an actual wallet where you can put cards, coupons...

Pay is the whole system of APIs used to pay via NFC or online, authed by biometrics (Touch/FaceID). As a user you just add your credit card and it works better than contactless credit cards.

Apple Card is an Apple credit card with cashback backed by Goldman Sachs. US-only.

dutchbrit• 4 years ago

I wouldn’t really call it a rip-off. Cash is such a broad word.

shrimpx2• 4 years ago

It seems to be Apple's vehicle for making p2p payments, particularly through messages.

It's also a virtual debit card, so you can spend or transfer the money, but it seems the its raison d'être is p2p payments.

kalleboo• 4 years ago

- 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.

WorldMaker5• 4 years ago

Interesting, this comment is the first I've learned/noticed that Apple Cash switched to the Visa network. As an Apple Cash user for some time (via the Apple Card and its Daily Cash), previously the Apple Cash card was on the Discover network and that limited its usefulness somewhat because Discover as a network is accepted by a lot fewer vendors than the top 2 of Visa/Mastercard. It's nice to know that it switched to the more common network.

(Also a neat part of a virtual card: checking in the Apple Wallet I can see that the card already switched numbers/networks for me. I don't need to wait for a replacement card. If not for this comment I wouldn't have even thought to check if it had switched, just transparent in the background. I probably got an email on it I ignored if I had wanted to know sooner, but there are so many emails.)

andrewaylett2• 4 years ago

I'm assuming that under the hood it's a pre-pay debit card. An easy choice when they already have all the infrastructure for making payments using debit cards in their products.

mattbrewsbytes2• 4 years ago

If you look at the fine print, Apple Cash appears to be a UI/branding layer for Green Dot Bank, a 40 yo bank in Utah. I believe you essentially end up with a FDIC bank account and Apple Cash just puts a huge brand name and pretty UI on the debit card for that account.

So Apple Pay is the service, Apple Card is their credit card and Apple Cash is their debit card via some bank. You can sidestep all that and just put your own credit card in the Wallet and use some other cash-like service.

The large problem with a lot of these cash-like services is in order for the exchange to happen, two people have to be on the same service. If Apple Cash takes off, then you just need to know if your friend has an iPhone and then its viable and much easier than having to go signup for one of these other services (zelle, cash app, venmo, etc.) just to chip in for a gift or dinner.

kdot2• 4 years ago

You still have to "sign up" for Apple Cash though, which is a process that involves uploading your government identification.

wan23• 4 years ago

You can Appple Pay with the Apple Cash in your Apple Wallet. You can also pay off your Apple Card balance with the Apple Cash, and also using the Apple Card earns you Apple Cash back. It's not a card in the wallet, but because the wallet UI only shows card UI components it's not surprising that you thought of it that way.

WorldMaker5• 4 years ago

Apple Cash shows up as its own card in the Apple Wallet. It's the bank account Debit Card pairing to the Apple Card credit card if you have both. You can have an Apple Cash card without having an Apple Card, though with the "Daily Cash" that Apple Card earns you currently can't have an Apple Card without an Apple Cash card (so far as I'm aware).

(Some confusion here is that you can have a separate Apple Store/iTunes credit that isn't Apple Cash and doesn't show up as a card in the Apple Wallet and can only be spent in the Apple Store/iTunes. Given the nature of how gift cards work that's likely to remain a separate "cash fund" and the two separate balances may always be a little confusing, with some people likely putting money into one when they meant to put it into the other. Hopefully Apple may find a good way to communicate the differences between them.)

phinnaeus• 4 years ago

This is a rebranding of Apple Pay Cash, which launched in 2014. Not sure if there's much in the ways of new features.

divbzero• 4 years ago

Yes, Apple has had this for awhile, but apparently there was an underlying change in April when the service shifted from Discover to Visa [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Apple_Cash

supernova87a• 4 years ago

Can I send US$ to someone in a different country? How does that work?

sgjohnson• 4 years ago

You can't, it's only available in the United States

AA-BA-94-2A-56• 4 years ago

Non-starter then

tcmb2• 4 years ago

From the FAQ: "send and receive money in Messages or Wallet. The money you receive appears on your Apple Cash card in Wallet."

Can I get the money out of Apple Cash, except for spending it via Apple Pay? Can I withdraw the money to a bank account? If not, I find it a bit limiting. If someone sends me money via Paypal, I can transfer it to my bank account and withdraw it from an ATM, or use it to buy stocks, or donate it to some organization that doesn't take Apple Pay payments...

kalenpw• 4 years ago

Yes, you can transfer it to your bank. Works just like Venmo or PayPal

M4v3R• 4 years ago

The article answers your question (yes, you can) and links to a support article with more information: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207882

tcmb2• 4 years ago

The link to the 'Apple Cash setup support page' is a 307 temporary redirect to the Apple Pay page for me. Not sure if this is due to locale, I don't have Apple Cash in my Apple Wallet settings as well...

bpve• 4 years ago

Isn't this just the same as a virtual pre-paid credit card, which every bank offers nowadays? Except, perhaps this will allow Apple to take our money and use it to invest.

datavirtue3• 4 years ago

They can't invest your money. The bank has to ensure a liquid balance for each person. Apple has zero control over that.

Consumers also enjoy CFPB protection/regulation with this product.

Apple calls Green Dot APIs for servicing and the backing account(s) is at Green Dot Bank.

sandGorgon• 4 years ago

how is the money transfer happening ? anyone know ?

is this VISA CardPay ?

The cards are issued by Green Dot Bank

pdimitar2• 4 years ago

What are the tax implications of this, if any? I know people in extended families regularly sending money between themselves. Can they expect the IRS knocking on the door and blaming them for hiding income?

I am worried about them now. They will find this super convenient and will use it from day one. Hope this service is private.

vmurthy• 4 years ago

I know people in extended families regularly sending money between themselves

Not a lawyer but I remember reading that the IRS (or equivalent) would be watching for patterns (large amounts/frequent transfers in just below a threshold etc across different sources -- bank accounts etc) . If there is probable cause, they might have to get a subpoena. This app is just one more source for them to confirm/deny wrongdoing.

cheschire• 4 years ago

I’m assuming you’re referring to gifts, not the transfer of money for goods or services (i.e. one person paying for everyone’s lunch and then getting repaid)

If so, then this page may answer your question. Basically unless you’re transferring over $22k in total in a year using Apple Cash, you’re fine.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

pdimitar2• 4 years ago

Yep, they're not penny-pinching each other. As you said, sometimes someone ends up paying for long family dinners thrice in a row but they're cool about it and somebody else just wires the person $400 a week or so later.

Multiply such occurrences several times a month and you get the idea.

Thanks for the link, it's helpful.

hrdwdmrbl• 4 years ago

USA exclusive

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

I’m not sure I understand what’s new.

Apple has had Cash for a long time (the Apple Card uses it for card rewards).

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

Ah. I see now. This is a specialization of Apple Pay, which has been around a while.

basisword3• 4 years ago

I find it odd things like this, Venmo, Square cash even need to exist. There’s a reason none of them get used much (or even exist) outside the US. Just fix banking in the US and they problems they solve disappear. In the UK (and the EU I believe too) bank transfers and instant and free. Digital banks like Monzo make it even easier (through contact syncing, better UI). Third party apps need not get involved.

x3ro• 4 years ago

It is true that bank transfers are fast, instant most of the time these days. However, when people want to quickly send me money, they still usually ask for paypal, simply because it’s easier to tell someone a nickname or email address than my IBAN. not that this is an unsolvable issue, just sharing my experience from Germany.

basisword3• 4 years ago

Interesting. In the UK we just need to share account number and sort code. These are quite easy to remember in your head. IBAN would complicate things. Is IBAN always required or only for cross-border transfers?

kenan_• 4 years ago

In the Netherlands a similar app is popular called https://www.tikkie.me. Commercial banks have also implemented their own solutions for generating payment links though. See https://www.ing.nl/particulier/digitaal-bankieren/mobiel-ban....

Payment links are easier and quicker to use than manually entering details in your banking app.

jlmb2• 4 years ago

In Estonia, you can link a phone number to your IBAN. When making payments, the sender just needs a phone number, and the corresponding IBAN is automatically looked up. (The lookup service is managed by the central bank, and used by all (major) banks.)

derhuerst• 4 years ago

Among many reasons why exchanging an IBAN and submitting a SEPA transfer in the EU is so cumbersome is that there were at least two standards to encode those details in a QR code.

It seems that, by now, except Czech Republic & Slovakia [1], the EPC QR code [2] has won.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code

vshade• 4 years ago

In Spain we have this Bizum thing that allow us to use phone numbers to send money between bank accounts. I Brazil we have Pix which is similar but allows great flexibility on how to identify one person(phone, email, random key)

newsclues• 4 years ago

Canada has email money transfers that is done via the big banks.

littleJeck• 4 years ago

In Australia we can use a phone number or email address to transfer money. It’s near instant transfer and even comes up with the full name of the person you’re sending money to.

Little cumbersome since I never bothered to get peoples phone numbers till recently.

samcrawford• 4 years ago

My experience with Paypal is the opposite. On multiple occasions I've had someone send me money on Paypal, but then it gets held up in checks and verification for 2-4 weeks, during which time I cannot access it. Sometimes it is instant though. There seems to be no pattern to it. This lack of certainty discourages me from using Paypal to receive payments in the future as I now consider it as a risky, slow, last-resort option.

sickmartian• 4 years ago

In argentina you can set an 'alias' for your account, if you don't you get one by default... I put my name as alias, I started getting payments from people I don't know o.O

kdot2• 4 years ago

If US we use Zelle, it's a for profit company owned by the large US banks. If your bank supports Zelle, you can send money instantly.

fiskeben• 4 years ago

Bank transfers are not instant in Norway at least. There is a popular peer to peer app called Vipps that handles all of the complexity for you. If somebody's at your door picking up the couch you sold online you can't wait for the bank transfer to go through.

johnwalkr• 4 years ago

In Canada you’ve been able to send money to people for 15 years just by knowing their email address. You also set a security question. I also had a debit card I could use in most stores almost 30 years ago.

I was shocked as a young adult when I could travel in the US and use my debit card to get money at almost any atm, yet Americans had to sometimes seek out the correct ATM, even in their country.

I was shocked again in Japan when I moved here ten years ago when online banking was useless, transfers took up to 3 days, and most of the bank’s atms closed at 5 or 6pm. Oddly enough I could always find some atm open 24 hours that worked with my Canadian debit card, even when I could not find an atm open that worked with my Japan Post bank debit card. Those problems are all solved now, but it’s no wonder that there are now 30+ competing digital payment systems in Japan vs just a few in Canada. You also have to still really go out of your way when choosing a bank to make sure that your debit card will work overseas.

The original Canadian system is called Interac, and it’s nice that everyone has been able to use it for 30+ Years. I’ve never heard of anyone being blacklisted due to an error, like you hear about with PayPal and the other things that have come since then.

voisin• 4 years ago

The flip side in Canada is our wire system for large transfers. We rolled our own technology and it is a complete failure. I do wire transfers many times per year and I would say 1/3 of them end in “lost” payments that require multiple phone calls and a number of days for the investigations group to track down. And this is through no error on the sender or recipient side (as explained by the investigations teams). There have been a number of articles over the last few years on the topic and I feel awful for those involved who actually do make a legitimate mistake (transpose numbers of a branch number for example) and never see their money again.

When it works perfectly, the transaction is still nowhere near instant (transfers “cross” only at certain times of the day, almost as if it involves actual people driving between banks - ludicrous!) and recipient banks often do not recognize receipt for a day. And the fees are relatively absurd ($80-120 to send and to the same to receive) considering Interac money transfers are free.

I’ll note that literally everyone I deal with shares the same experiences with wires.

It is bizarre that the largest, likely most important, transactions we have a system that works objectively far worse with fewer checks and balances and more opportunity for error than the system we use for meaningless small transactions.

zwass• 4 years ago

I moved to Canada from the US recently and was shocked at how poorly Interac e-transfers work and that there is no Venmo/Cash equivalent. The system seems to assume a 1:1 mapping from phone numbers or emails to bank accounts. Having multiple bank accounts means disabling and reconfiguring the autodeposit features constantly. I've also gotten used to friends not receiving transfers I send them, which was never a thing with Venmo/Cash -- you just check the history in the app.

ATMs are also mind-boggling after getting used to banks that will refund ATM fees in the US. In Canada it's back to the fee to use ATM + fee from the bank for using an ATM that I remember from 20 years ago in the US.

sascha_sl• 4 years ago

Instant SEPA is still a bit of a luxury feature adopted mostly by fintechs, at least the sending side.

harg• 4 years ago

I believe Monzo is becoming available in the US so this might help improve the situation there, at least for monzo-to-monzo transfers. However I guess the whole system needs improving to allow seamless inter-bank transfers without a middleman.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

US FedNow instant payments go live next year.

Angostura• 4 years ago

Launched 2019. Still no sign of it in the UK

tluyben2• 4 years ago

There is a lot of competition in the uk/eu I guess. Everyone has Revolut etc already.

deergomoo• 4 years ago

Still no sign of it in the UK

To be fair, it would be borderline pointless here. Bank transfers are instant and free in almost all cases, and competition from the challenger banks has made the process a lot smoother in the legacy banks’ apps too.

I think the only USP Apple’s offering would have here is nice iMessage integration.

vivegi2• 4 years ago

In India, the coalescing of payments around the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)'s payment network and standard called Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been a gamechanger. Bank consumers can create virtual addresses that they can give to any individual or entity and use it for sending / receiving money. The recipient can be a customer of any bank, not necessarily theirs. As long as the bank is on the NPCI backbone (almost all banks are), the transaction is safe, secure and seamless. At the moment, there are no fees for using UPI and the transaction limit is Rs. 200,000 (approx. USD 2500), so a vast majority of small ticket purchases can be done electronically. The transaction volume statistics at NPCI is pretty impressive. https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics

intrasight• 4 years ago

The Economist recently discussed. To demonstrate the success of UPI, the mentioned that panhanders now routinely present an UPI barcode instead of a pan. I doubt that Apple Cash will have the same success.

londons_explore• 4 years ago

If apple makes it fee-free and paperwork free even for small businesses, and they make an android compatible app, then it will be successful and will take over from banks and MasterCard/visa.

Otherwise it'll remain a tiny proportion of the overall payments industry.

zbarnes• 4 years ago

link?

infofarmer• 4 years ago

Beggars in Mainland China have been presenting QR codes (for Alipay and WeChat Pay) for years now.

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/beggars-with-qr-co...

FabHK2• 4 years ago

Goes to show that deft government regulation/steering can really achieve something. Similar to SEPA in the EU.

leokennis• 4 years ago

I read about a lot of proprietary apps/services in this chat to allow easy and instantaneous transfers of money between parties. They probably work fine and most importantly filled a gap at the right time.

But with SEPA Instant Payments (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...) there is:

- A scheme that works based on standards: ISO PACS messages (easy for other banks to join)

- Actually transfer the funds from bank A to bank B (not sure if other schemes mentioned here basically work on a "we received an acknowledgement, we promise to send the actual money later via a real payment") in a 10 second period

- Does not depend on the commitment of a (small) group of private companies top keep existing, but instead depends on an obligation in EU law enforcing the national banks to force their member banks to implement it

The only thing that still sucks is that you send money to others based on their IBAN - which is fine but definitely not as intuitive as an e-mail address or phone number.

ptman• 4 years ago

It's really ridiculous that EU is relying on Mastercard/Visa everywhere. There is EPI (European Payments Initiative, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative), but it's slow. And not everyone is happy with that, so there's a competing initiative called P27 https://nordicpayments.eu/

subpixel• 4 years ago

I'm reminded that in 1994, in Germany, I could give you a number and you could send me money, for free, via the post office.

Dave3of52• 4 years ago

Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank

Never heard of Green Dot Bank. They seem to have these banks listed under them:

"GO2bank, GoBank and Bonneville Bank".

I assume that Green Dot Bank isn't holding the money itself but passing it on to a bigger bank. Anyone know who's actually behind this ?

Edit: I think maybe Green Dot is holding the money themselves on this are they a well known bank in the USA ?

alistairSH2• 4 years ago

Never heard of them. They are not a well-known retail bank.

Edit - Looks like they do pre-paid credit cards, which explain why I’ve never heard of them. Been around since 1999.

datavirtue3• 4 years ago

Green Dot is a prepaid debit card marketer and servicer. Green Dot Bank....is a bank that is owned by Green Dot. Green Dot has some products on different banks...like Metabank.

Green Dot is or was the dominant prepaid card sold in Walmart and all major grocery stores. They offer a Rapid Reload service where you can bring cash to a Walmart register and have it loaded into a prepaid card.

They basically serve people who have been ejected from the banking system. One of their main products was an anonymous card that could be reloaded and used to transfer money. A favorite of prostitutes and other illegal services that was eventually snuffed out by the banks because of KYC (know your customer) violations.

People would load money onto the card and just give it to someone else or transfer between them. All anon.

Dave3of52• 4 years ago

How did they make money in this ?

Most banks wouldn't work in this manner due to high risk.

alistairSH2• 4 years ago

Hasn’t Apple Cash been around for a few years now? What prompted this post?

plg• 4 years ago

I find it hilarious that at this Apple Canada help page:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207886

it says among other requirements for Apple Cash:

What you need

- Be at least 18 years old and live in the United States.

moolcool• 4 years ago

So typical of the Canadian UX for so many things :(

alex_young• 4 years ago

That’s the Canadian English version of a help page. The British English version says the same thing. It just means this product has launched in the US and has localized help content.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207886

sparkywolf• 4 years ago

Why is this on the front page..? Apple Cash has been around for years. It doesn't even look like they've added anything new unless I'm missing something?

aembleton• 4 years ago

Good point, here it is from last year https://web.archive.org/web/20210621194249/https://www.apple...

pjc50• 4 years ago

It's just a regular card:

    "Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. Learn more about the Terms and Conditions. Only available in the U.S. on eligible devices. To send and receive money with an Apple Cash account, you must be 18 and a U.S. resident. If you’re under 18, your family organizer can set up Apple Cash for you as part of their Apple Cash Family account. Security checks may require more time to make funds available. Apple Cash Family accounts can send or receive up to $2000 per transaction or within a seven-day period. Sending money from Wallet requires iOS 15.5 or later.

    An Apple Cash card is required to use Daily Cash, except if you do not have an Apple Cash card, in which case you can only apply your Daily Cash as a credit on your statement balance. The Apple Cash card is issued by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. See apple.com/apple-pay for more information. Daily Cash is earned on purchases after the transaction posts to your account. Actual posting times vary by merchant. Daily Cash is subject to exclusions, and additional details apply. See the Apple Card Customer Agreement for more information.

    Variable APRs range from 11.24% to 22.24% based on creditworthiness. Rates as of April 1, 2022.

    To access and use all the features of Apple Card, you must add Apple Card to Wallet on an iPhone or iPad with the latest version of iOS or iPadOS. Update to the latest version by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Tap Download and Install.

    Available for qualifying applicants in the United States.

    Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch"

WorldMaker5• 4 years ago

Person to person cash transfers and family Apple Cash accounts are new features just recently enabled. I assume that's why it's in the news today.

Apple Cash

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