Reposting 12/4/17 to update that a report indicates Amex gift cards is a supported payment method with the standard 3% fee. No other Visa/MC gift card seems to be working from data points we’ve seen.
Originally posted 6/5/17. Reposting 11/7/17 since this is now live in public beta.
At WWDC Apple announced that they would be adding person to person payments. It will be integrated into messages as an iMesssage app. You’ll be able to send from debit and credit cards that are stored in your Apple pay wallet. When you receive funds from a person to person transfer it’ll be stored on an Apple Pay Cash Card until you withdraw those funds to a bank account or transfer it to somebody else.
Fees will be as follows:
- Credit cards: 3% fee
- Debit cards: No fee
The big problem with this is of course you can only send and receive money between users that also have Apple devices. The other thing to consider is that this exact same service (without the Apple device requirement) with the same fee structure already exists in Venmo and other competitions like Square cash.
The Apple Pay Cash Card will be backed by Green Dot, given their history I doubt there will be much room for unintended uses. The big question is what will Apple Pay consider a debit card and what sort of limits will they put on the number of debit cards you can add. Personally I see this being dead on arrival, but you can always hope. I was expecting an Apple Pay rewards announcement as well, but it looks like they are content to let Samsung dominate in that department.
Hat tip to /r/churning
