Apple ends funding Apple Pay Cash from credit cards as it announces its own card

Apple has quietly ended the the option of funding Apple Pay Cash balances from a credit card. The company made the low-key announcement on the same day it announced the Apple Card.

Previously, if you wanted to make a person-to-person payment via Apple Cash, and didn’t have sufficient balance, you could withdraw money from a linked credit card …

Cheddar anchor Hope King noticed the change, sent to Apple Pay Cash users.

Starting on March 25, 2019, we will no longer support using credit cards to fund person to person payments. This will ensure Apple Pay Cash customers never have to worry about cash advance fees that may be charged by issuing banks.

You can still fund Apple Pay Cash from a debit card, where no fees should apply.

Hope suggests that the move is designed to boost adoption of the company’s own card, but we understand that the restriction will apply equally to the Apple Card.

The company has also announced instant transfers from your Apple Pay Cash balance to Visa debit cards – for a fee.

With Instant Transfer, you can now quickly transfer money from your Apple Pay Cash balance to an eligible Visa debit card in Wallet. Instant transfers are generally processed within minutes of your request, but could take up to 30 minutes. A 1% fee (with a minimum fee of $0.25 and a maximum fee of $10) is deducted from the amount of each instant transfer.

The Apple Card will have no annual fee and lower interest rates than most credit cards, together with a cashback scheme offering 1% on physical card transactions, 2% on Apple Pay ones and 3% on purchases of Apple products and services.

As you’d expect, the card is mostly designed to be used as a digital card within the Wallet app, with a range of monitoring and analysis options. For example, it uses color-coded spending categories to help you understand the breakdown of your purchases. There will, however, also be a minimalist physical card as an option, likely with a one-off fee to buy it.

It will be available from the summer, initially in the US only but likely to rollout to other countries later.