[Supports Amex Gift Cards] Apple Pay Person to Person Payments (Credit Cards Incur 3% Fee, Debit Cards are Free)

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

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Satya
Satya (@guest_554048)
January 24, 2018 20:49

I added American Express Secure Pay gift card that I bought from Sam’s. It got added to Apple Pay as American Express gift card. Looks like it is recognized as credit card, it’s showing 3% fee for P2P payments. And some apps that support apple pay wont let me pay with this card.

patrick
patrick (@guest_550517)
January 13, 2018 16:44

is chase credit card count as cash advance?

bY
bY (@guest_539484)
December 21, 2017 04:04

I just tried to add an Amex gift card I bought from Jewel Osco and it did not recognize the card. Received the message “Apple does not currently support this type of card”

Anyone else have any luck?

rab
rab (@guest_530445)
December 5, 2017 00:39

if the fee for using a AGC is 3% then whats the point?
Cant we directly use a CC for 3% or does it count as cash advance?

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
December 5, 2017 00:55

Lots of times people get AGC with various promos and they are a pain to unload.

Priya
Priya (@guest_530429)
December 5, 2017 00:19

No fee for Debit cards, means Apple GC will be counted as debit card with no fee to send?

When is ios 11.2 going to be available to all of us?

Jason
Jason (@guest_530566)
December 5, 2017 07:00

It was available a couple of days ago.

Alex
Alex (@guest_530348)
December 4, 2017 22:29

Could someone explain to me the benefit of allowing Amex gift cards on this?

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
December 5, 2017 00:55

Lots of times people get AGC with various promos and they are a pain to unload.

P
P (@guest_530342)
December 4, 2017 22:18

Oooh, supports Amex gift cards. Now to lobby Amex to allow shipping of gift cards to Hawaii.

Adam
Adam (@guest_513961)
November 12, 2017 11:35

Apple Rewards? Hahaha, you expect something back from the greediest company on earth: 🙂

jd
jd (@guest_532366)
December 7, 2017 23:51

haha come on man let’s give them a chance. Maybe they will have generous offers like “Every $5000 spend in the Apple stores you can get a free screen protector, a $199 value. “

Jason
Jason (@guest_512846)
November 10, 2017 13:19

Discover, Blue Fed CU won’t work

Tom
Tom (@guest_511450)
November 8, 2017 16:14

I wouldn’t call this DOA, it has the potential for a very wide adoption. As much as people have Venmo and Paypal accounts, nothing is as easy as something that is baked in and requires very little signup. iMessage is one of the largest messaging platforms and it’s Apple only. I suspect Apple Pay P2P will be similar. It won’t have many benefits like rewards but I’m guessing many iOS users will use it once iOS 11.2 becomes widely adopted because it’s easy and you can do it in iMessage.