Why Apple Card Restricts Its Users from Purchasing Crypto

In 2019, Apple Inc (AAPL.O) went from a computers & telecom R&D company to a banking platform. 

Whether it is based on the ideal arbitrage opportunities Apple tends to ‘ride’ (check Apple’s $999 USD monitor stand, which has literally less than $1 USD production cost), or the successful marketing strategies the company used to deploy for decades, Apple manages to partner with Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) in order to create a credit card, designed for Apple’s iPhones, that will also have a physical representation as a titanium card. 

The card which is a collaborative effort between Apple, Goldman Sachs, and Mastercard, is said to have special wallet-based rewards, while Apple CEO Tim Cook says it could be the biggest revolution in credit cards in the last 50 years. 

Besides the fancy physical copy of the card, the Apple card will be implemented within the Apple Wallet app. and could be used across all Apple devices. 

It is supposed to have 0 transaction fees, including international fees and it is supposed to also offer lower interest rates. 

We’ve seen many new digital banking institutions popping up lately, like N26, the crypto-focused Change card, among others, but Apple really takes it on a whole new level due to the initial partnership with banking titan Goldman Sachs.

There is one small problem with this new fancy Apple card

While the titanium card looks amazing and has great interest rates and low or no fees at all on an international level, it won’t allow its users to spend their own money when it comes to a group of digital goods, more specifically cryptocurrencies. 

According to Apple’s new customer agreement, which was apparently posted on Goldman Sachs’ website last Friday, users won’t be able to purchase cryptocurrency of any kind, regardless of local laws, regulations, and transparency protocols a respective user might be already following in order to participate in the crypto market. 

Additionally, just to make it look like a non crypto-targeted move, Apple says the card cannot be used to purchase cash advances, cash equivalents, casino gaming chips, race track wagers, or lottery tickets.

Goldman’s representatives declined to comment and Apple took some time before showing some clearance with its position.  

We saw so many other banks in the past trying to condemn cryptocurrency purchases via credit or debit cards, and if history taught us a lesson it would be that all these banks would stop us from buying cryptos, then buy cryptos on their own, then suddenly say something like “hey, it’s ok to buy cryptos now”.

Where does this lead

Apple clearly knows something it doesn’t want to share with its customers. That could be either a sign that cryptocurrencies will raise this year or exactly the opposite.

Cryptos could see market volatility generated by, yes, banking institutions, government organizations, and financial behemoths similar to what we experienced between 2017 and 2019. 

The thing is that many other major banks, as well as cryptocurrency brokers such as Coinbase, attempted to do something similar back in the day, and the result was devasting at best.

They simply lost millions of customers who seek their way into cryptos through alternative monetary platforms, or even via hand-to-hand brokers in order to avoid the gov-bank association that blocked crypto purchases for a short period of time.

The fact that a user is prohibited to spend his own money as he wishes alone, is already a red flag for Apple or any other financial institution, not to mention banks, as the average customer of the internet era, doesn’t really care about which bank he uses, or how he’s going to acquire what he wants, as long as he gets it.  

Verdict

You should have in mind that banks like Lloyds, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, as well as pro networking players such as Facebook, and WeChat all banned cryptocurrency purchases, trading, and/or promotion, only to create their own “token” in the next years.

There is a high chance we’ll be seeing an Apple-coin of some sort in the near future. For that reason, it would be only predictable and even necessary to ban the purchase of competitive monetary systems from Apple’s strategic point of view. 

Take Facebook for example who did exactly the same, prior to announcing and launching its native currency Libra. Did it work over Facebook’s favor? You do the math. We see Bitcoin growing, while Libra is not even trusted by the government it belongs to. 

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