
Apple Card restrictions include no jailbreaking or cryptocurrency purchases - lelf
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20752375/apple-card-credit-restrictions-jailbreaking-cryptocurrency
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skywhopper
Pointless clickbait article. None of this is interesting, new, surprising, or
unique to the Apple Card.

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IloveHN84
Looks like car makers pumping 500hp under the hood and then speed limiting to
250km/h (Audi, Mercedes, BMW related?).

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ianai
You also have to have an iPhone and apple account. If you don’t have a
“required device” they only support interaction through snail mail. They will
terminate accounts that fail to maintain a Required Device and Apple account
(in good standing).

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cascom
I’d be more interested in reading the privacy policy, as that is where I think
this card may have a true edge vs the competition.

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saagarjha
I wonder if this verbiage is coming from Apple or Goldman Sachs (as I take it,
banking apps are generally not too pleased when they run on jailbroken
hardware).

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vineyardmike
The linked documents are Goldman Sachs documents. So they're coming from GS,
at least directly.

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sdinsn
> It’s rare to have a line of credit that can be used for cash equivalents

Not true. Most credit cards have cash advances.

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ceejayoz
Technically, I believe that's a loan taken with your credit line as the
collateral. It often has a different interest rate and limit than the main
line of credit does.

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kitchenkarma
This is the future of electronic money. Companies will decide for you what you
can or cannot buy.

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SmellyGeekBoy
It's their money, they can place whatever restrictions on it they like. You're
under no obligation to use their service.

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Mengkudulangsat
Not allowing cryptocurrency purchases with a credit card is good, for the same
reason we should not allow credit cards on Robinhood.

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aey
Can I buy Warcraft gold? Or rmb?

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Mengkudulangsat
Warcraft gold, sure. RMB, I hope not.

When you charge your credit card, on the bank's books these are marked as
retail credit. The bank expect this portion of their portfolio to consist of
consumer expenses and manages default risks accordingly.

Banks also provide credit for currencies / investments, but those are
containerized in another portion of the portfolio with different risk
management practices.

Mixing these two portfolios together will make risk management tricky.

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yalogin
I hope the Apple Card is a huge success. There will be a fight to win
customers and there will be better rewards from competitors. I will be waiting
for those.

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cooperaustinj
Competitors already have better rewards. The Apple Card will have no impact on
the world of credit cards.

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briandear
Apple Card has no fees at all. Not even a late fee. And privacy is far ahead
of competitors. Competitors sell your purchase history everywhere. You also
get the virtual numbers, you can change your number any time you want and
customer support is via iMessage without the nonsense of the "Press 1 for your
balance" phone systems common for more credit cards.

It also comes down to trusting Capital One etc. with your data, vs. trusting
Apple.

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lawnchair_larry
Not quite - the issuer is not Apple, but Goldman Sachs. So it’s about trusting
Goldman Sachs and Apple and Mastercard with your data, vs trusting Capital
One.

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TazeTSchnitzel
You mean Capital One and Mastercard?

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shmerl
_> we know now the Apple Card won’t play nice with a jailbroken iPhone_

Smells like anti-trust violation.

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dylz
Virtually every banking app on Android tries to detect rooted devices as much
as possible and many suspend your online banking access if they find one..

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cyphar
Some bank apps used to work on rooted phones, but thanks to Google SafetyNet
(proprietary spyware which reports metrics about your phone to Google so they
can determine whether it is "safe" for apps to run) a lot of apps that never
did rooted checks have started using it.

It might be possible to use XPosed to trick apps into think that the SafetyNet
checks passed, but I bet they've worked hard to make that as hard as humanly
possible.

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noahster11
If you use Magisk, which is one of the most common ways to root nowadays, it
not only roots, but allows custom software to be installed "systemlessly".
This means in most cases, SafetyNet won't be able to detect a rooted phone.

Just like with jailbreaking, smart people will always find a way around these
barriers Apple and Google put up

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netsharc
It's funny, it's basically installing a rootkit on your phone (one that you
trust), it's a piece of software that has access to everything but tries to
hide from detection.

But yes I have it too...

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AVTizzle
The specific callout of restricting "cryptocurrency purchases" in the title is
click-bait.

Actual context from the article:

>And according to Reuters, it will also come with a ban on purchasing cash
advances and cash equivalents, with the latter including cryptocurrencies,
casino chips, and lottery tickets.

>>It would seem neither Apple nor Goldman Sachs has anything in particular
against cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin and other digital tokens would seem to
fall under the cash equivalents umbrella.

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rolltiide
JP Morgan Chase currently lost their motion to dismiss a lawsuit against their
policy of treating cryptocurrency purchases as cash advances

But their terms of service didn't spell out cryptocurrencies, lets see how it
plays out

I’m betting cryptocurrency purchases will begin accurately falling under a
consumer goods framework sooner rather than later, indistinct from buying a
cryptographic accesstoken for any saas product which powers your user session.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Why wouldn't they be treated as cash equivalents? Do you believe
cryptocurrency is not currency?

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rolltiide
They are hashes secured by repeatable cryptography which are stored on a
distributed database

The monikers are skeumorphs to be more relatable to a nearest prior elementary
concept

Some of those hashes are used for payment, some of those hashes are used for a
record of fractional ownership of an enterprise, some of those hashes are used
to access a good or service. A credit card company would therefore be
misapplying their policy, when there isnt enough information in their
transaction detail and also no rationale for charging higher fees for this
type of transaction. If any actual risk was higher they should make a third
category. Otherwise treat a crypto transaction like any purchase of consumer
goods.

~~~
ceejayoz
This is the sort of "laws work like computer code" thinking that gets you "I
don't recognize this court because it has a fringed flag" sovereign citizen
types.

A judge is not going to see it this way.

~~~
rolltiide
Several countries and states have laws reflective of what I described, with
the same taxonomy already in committee in Congress

US payment processors are the ones flying blind and interpreting things
arbitrarily, and the courts might too, but the direction the legislatures are
going will correct that

~~~
ceejayoz
US payment processors have been giving casino chips this treatment for
decades. I see no reason US legislatures would give cryptocurrency better
treatment than that - if anything, they're _more_ likely to smack it around.

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dragonwriter
Casino chips tend to be fiat-denominated and trivially redeemable at face
value, so are true cash equivalents.

Cryptocurrencies tend not to be fiat-denominated, and even those that are
don't have trivial free frictionless exchange for fiat at face value.

~~~
ceejayoz
The Euro has an exchange rate and forex spread, too, hence neither of those
things are disqualifying as a cash equivalent.

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dragonwriter
In pretty sure Euros are fiat-denominated and readily exchangeable for fiat
(being, after all, fiat, makes this trivially true.)

~~~
ceejayoz
Again, this is that "laws work like computer code" thinking.

Euros vary in USD value, and take a process to convert to/from USD just like
Bitcoin does. Governments are not going to ban banks from treating BTC
transactions as cash advances.

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dragonwriter
> Again, this is that "laws work like computer code" thinking

No, it's not.

Having done a political science degree with significant coursework in law and
judicial politics, and gone back later and done a couple years of law school
while working as a programmer before deciding that the cost/benefit of a
license to practice law wasn't really worth it, I'm _somewhat_ familiar with
the differences between law and computer code.

> Euros vary in USD value, and take a process to convert to/from USD just like
> Bitcoin does.

That's, ironically, the “law works like computer code” thinking you were just
complaining about. While there are certainly laws focussed on _USD_ and
equivalents vs every other asset imaginable, there are lots of laws about
money more generally, and a lot of established precedent about what is and is
not money, and, perhaps more critically, about how terms which are ambiguous
in contracts (perhaps because subject matter to which they are being applied
wasn't well known when they were drafted) are applied between parties with
unequal power over drafting of th contract.

> Governments are not going to ban banks from treating BTC transactions as
> cash advances.

Governments aren't going tonban banks from applying the same didadvantageous
conditions applied to cash advances to any transactions they want, but those
with decent consumer protection laws may also not let them do so arbitrarily
after the fact without clear notice in contracts of the kinds of transactions
to which those terms will be applied, just because of some loose analogy
between the subject of a term in a contract and product class to which it
would not generally have been understood to apply by most people agreeing to
the contract.

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ptmcc
I'm still mystified by what supposed competitive edge the Apple Card is
supposed to have. Its rewards program is pretty mediocre, and virtually every
Visa/MC/Amex supports Apple Pay seamlessly as is.

I'm pretty bought into the Apple ecosystem and do almost all my spending via
credit card. I feel like I am supposed to be the target market, so what is the
selling point?

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paul7986
I think I read that if you lose your Apple Credit Card they will issue you a
new one automatically in Apple Pay. You'll still get the physical one in the
mail later, but if true that's a better UX then what all other cards currently
do.

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frutiger
I recently reported a fraudulent transaction on my card. My existing card was
invalidated and a new one was on the way. Apple Pay was automatically made
aware of this, it said something to the effect of: “Looks like you are getting
a replacement card. You can still use this until it arrives.” After it
arrived, the number had automatically updated (I didn’t notice exactly when).

In other words, this particular aspect of the UX is already solved.

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millstone
How did you discover the fraudulent transaction? How did you report it?

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frutiger
I have every transaction send me a notification from the Chase app. I called
up Chase when I noticed a transaction I hadn’t made.

