Could the Apple Card change all credit cards?

SALT LAKE CITY — Apple introduced a new credit card, called Apple Card, to the world during its event last week, and it could change the way that modern cards are built.

Apple announced at its event last week that it has teamed up with Goldman Sachs and MasterCard for the launch of the card, according to The Associated Press.

• The card offers 3 percent cash back on products you buy from Apple.

• The Apple Card, which is a new physical credit card from Apple, comes with a few perks that traditional credit cards don't have. For example, the card doesn't have late fees or over-the-limit fees, which traditional credit cards are known to have.

Security: But the card lacks one other thing that might change the way all credit cards operate — a credit card number.

• Craig Vosburg, president of North America for MasterCard, told Bloomberg Television recently that Apple Card's lack of credit card numbers could lead other banks to do the same. Credit card numbers, after all, wind up in the hands of thieves on multiple occasions.

• "We want security to be at the highest level possible across the ecosystem, and we want to do that in ways that don't introduce friction and make payments inconvenient for consumers," he said.

Similar: As BGR notes, the lack of credit card numbers could influence all credit cards in the same way that getting rid of signatures led to the increase in chips and chip readers.

• "Getting rid of card numbers follows in the same vein as payment networks slowly moving away from the signature requirement, which they started to do when things like the implementation of chips in credit cards made signatures less necessary to ask for. And it's not just Apple. U.S. banks like Capital One are also already starting to experiment with limited-use card numbers, assigned to retailers as needed."

Bigger picture: Apple's move into the credit card space didn't impress all experts, The Associated Press reported.

• "I'm underwhelmed," said Ted Rossman, industry analyst at Creditcards.com. "People will sign up for it, but that will be mostly because they love Apple, not because this card is better than anything that already exists."

• WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou told the AP there are better cards out there that do the same thing as the Apple Card.

• "There are other cards that have better rewards and no annual fee," he said. "There is a healthy market there, so from that perspective there is nothing unique."

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2OC85dd