lkrupp wrote:
You can do all those things with the Apple Card. You can view purchases, you can pay your bill, you can view and print statements, ALL online on your iPhone. What does doing it on a website have to do with anything?
[Edited by Moderator]
In many relationships, one partner handles the mundane (but important) accounting task. My wife is quite happy to let me deal with this. Like many middle-aged families, we have quite a few accounts, from bank accounts we had prior to getting married, credit cards, the mortgage, maybe a car loan, and our retirement/investment accounts. We also have the usual utility bills to pay, and the other expenses incurred from just living.
I use Banktivity to keep this all straight. Doing this all on a proper computer, not a phone, lets me have more than one application window open and visible simultaneously. I pay all of our bills through the various billers' websites. The bill gets paid, I save the receipt using the macOS "Print To PDF" feature, and I accept the scheduled transaction in Banktivity.
Enter the Apple Card. The card uses the iPhone as the security dongle. I get this, it's the most secure way to authenticate the card. But this precludes obvious things like multiple cards per account. I can't get an Apple Card account and add my wife as joint on it, and get a card issued in her name on it.
And this leads to the most glaring problem I have with the card. Since all of the card management is done on the cardholder's phone, I have to tell my wife, "can you pay your Apple Card bill from the XYZ account?" I have to tell her, "when you get a chance, please generate the statement PDF and send it to me so I can reconcile your card account and schedule the payment." Now it's one thing if I'm doing the accounting while we're watching TV. It's another thing entirely if she's traveling for work, or if I'm traveling.
So it becomes a matter of convenience and choice. If managing the Apple Card is too inconvenient, we simply won't use it, and we'll use one of the other cards that offers similar, or better, benefits. Apple's cash back is no better than my local credit union's card, and Amex' customer support and other benefits (like car rental insurance) are superior. Lowes and Target give a 5% discount at purchase when you use their house card. I don't care about interest rates because I pay off our balances in full each month. (And the Apple Card's best rate, which I have, is still higher than my credit union's card or our USAA card.)
I expect that the uptake on getting the card was so great because of the ease of applying for it -- the offer is on everyone's iPhone. Apple and Goldman Sachs will never release any data on this, but I wonder how many people will get the card, use it for a month or two, and then realize that it's a pain to manage, and go back to their usual card that gives them airline miles or other cash back or whatever. Few people actually cancel a credit card because of the (alleged) affect that has on credit scores, so the card will sit in the drawer (and on the phone) and not be used.
I should mention that I did a little survey of my married friends about financial management duties, and it was unanimous -- every couple had one spouse who did the accounting. It's all part of the division of labor in any such relationship. Sure, it's a small and not very scientific survey, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is the norm and not the exception.
One more thing (as Jobs would say). The arrogance of some people in this thread is astonishing. Just because you don't need a feature doesn't mean that others find that feature useful or even vital. So to everyone who posts and is dismissive of requests that Apple support better Card management, get over yourselves. Your experience is not the only experience.
