Comment by mullingitover
2 days ago
The hilarious thing is the Apple card is a chunk of titanium and doesn’t have contactless payment capabilities in the year 2025.
(Obviously their angle is you’ll use your phone or watch, which isn’t a huge stretch)
The physical card is explicitly just a backup option for when contactless payment isn't available. It would be sort of weird to make it support contactless payment.
I use and love Apple Pay, but it's not ideal for every situation. The biggest flaw is that it requires waving your expensive phone in the vicinity of the reader.
Apple Pay is more risky than contactless cards. There is a risk of dropping your phone or it being stolen out of your hand. I only use it in controlled indoor environments, like at a retail store, where I have enough personal space to feel comfortable getting out my phone. If I want to pay at e.g. a stall in a crowded market, I'm using my card.
Clearly the solution is to buy an Apple Watch.
Where do you live where your phone can't be out in public for fear of opportunistic theft?
1 reply →
EDIT: hmm, actually the screenshots on Apple.com show a card with a chip, so how come contactless doesn’t work? Deliberately disabled?
—-
Wearing my ecology hat, you could argue if barely any of their customers will use it for contactless, then it’s a waste of resources manufacturing a chip.
(Of course there are plenty of other areas of Apple’s business where they thoroughly undermine this - persuading people to buy wireless in-ear headphones, iPads that have so much glue inside when you ‘replace’ the battery they just give you a new device because it’s too much hassle etc.)
Or… maybe insisting on using Titanium means it’s an PITA adding a chip as well, versus plastic? (At least one of my UK cards claims “made from 100% recycled plastic” now).
There are titanium cards with tap and pay. So I think it’s just an Apple policy.
The real problem is that the physical card pays only 1% cashback, so the only thing one can demonstrate when paying with the titanium card is financial illiteracy.
It is very hard to get any proper use of apple card without an iphone, so it's clearly designed for people buying into i-system wholesale. The titanium thing is more backup (for those dinosaurs still not accepting applepay) and a gimmick than anything else. You're not supposed to use it as the primary means of payment.
It's strange but I've been to many places where the iPhone's contactless payment doesn't work but normal cards do. Most common are parking lot machines and automated car washes.
Which is actually more secure across the board, which is why I prefer it
> Which is actually more secure across the board
Than mobile payments? Absolutely not
Preventing an RFD vector on the physical card and assuming the user will use mobile payments is less secure than RFD on the card also?
Methinks your reading was not sufficient
I've never used the card. too heavy.
It’s much lighter than most other metal cards while being much sturdier too! A real shame it’s completely useless (bad cashback, no printed number making it useless for e.g. hotel or airline card number confirmations at checkin).
Great for jimmying locks, so not completely useless