Apple announced the Apple Card in March, the Cupertino brand's first-ever physical payments card "built on the principles of simplicity, transparency, and privacy" and designed primarily to be used with Apple Pay on Apple devices such the iPhone and the Apple Watch.
Now, the company apparently has started rolling out Apple Cards to its employees.
Apple Card Packaging
Noted Apple tipster Ben Geskin shared images of this card on Twitter, revealing the consumer packaging that features a colorful gradient on the front and brief instructions on how to activate the card with an iPhone. Geskin photoshopped his own name over the engraved one on the card presumably to hide the source's identity.
This initial wave of Apple Cards is apparently part of a semi-private beta for Apple employees. The package also comes with a hidden NFC tag, as 9to5Mac reports. To activate the card itself, the user will have to open the Wallet app on their iPhone and hold it near this NFC tag. This associates the digital Apple Card already set up in the Wallet app with the physical card.
Apple Card
The Apple Card features titanium as its primary material, giving it a touch of luxury, which should perhaps come as no surprise on Apple's part. The customer names come engraved into the metal. Other than that, the card features precious little else. There are no other printed identifying characteristics, including expiry dates or account numbers, as on conventional cards. The front features the owner's name, the chip, and the Apple logo — nothing else. Apple's nod to simple and minimalistic designs, most likely. On the back, there's the logos for MasterCard and Goldman Sachs, Apple's official banking partners for the service.
Apple Card Perks
The Apple Card, as previously mentioned, will mark Apple's foray into the word of a physical payments, giving its already increasingly popular Apple Pay a tangible component.
Apple Card users get a handful of perks over typical cards, including being charged zero fees for late transactions or foreign currency exchange.
Another highlight is the interest rate, which hovers somewhere between 13 and 34 percent, of course depending on the customer's credit rating.
There's also a Daily Cashback program aimed to incentivize electronic transactions. This perk returns 2 percent of all Apple Pay transactions, 3 percent for any Apple purchase, and 1 percent for purchases made with the physical card.
Apple is expected to release the Apple Card sometime this summer. Should you get an Apple Card? Tech Times weighs in.
