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Concept: How Apple Card+ could rival other premium cards with exclusive perks and rewards

One of Apple’s best services is Apple Card. Sure, it might just be another credit card that happens to have a really great app in Wallet, but Apple Card could be much more than that. Currently, Apple Card offers excellent customer support, powerful security features, and one of the best physical cards you can get your hands on. Folks like Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg have been wondering, though, what could be next for Apple Card? We’ve been wondering the same thing, and here’s a dive into our ideas.

The first thing we’d like to see for an “Apple Card+” is an improved, and frankly, more badass physical card. It starts with a new dark finish that you could call space gray if you wanted to. Apple tends to like to make its higher-end products in darker colors so here’s a golden opportunity to show off. The current Apple Card is missing one big feature, and that’s tap to pay. You are required to swipe or insert your chip with the current card, so it would be great to see Apple add Apple Pay to the next one. I love being able to tap my bank cards to terminals just like how I tap my iPhone or Apple Watch. It doesn’t make sense for the Apple Card to be missing such a simple feature of modern credit cards.

Next up are Apple retail store perks. Currently, Apple offers 3% cash back on Apple products bought through the Apple store. I think an Apple Card+ should offer 5% cash back. After all, anyone with an Apple Card+ is more than likely an Apple fan. I’d also like to see them raise the general cash back percentage to a standard 3%.

Apple could also offer customers complimentary expedited shipping on orders, an extra 5% when you trade in a device, and an extra year of Apple Care when it’s purchased with an Apple Card+. In terms of customer support, Apple could offer customers with an Apple Card+ same-day Genius Bar reservations. That’s one of the biggest gripes about the current Apple Store situation – it’s nearly impossible to get into an Apple Store immediately for help with a problem. And with lots of customers shopping with in-store pick up, we’d also like to see Apple offer priority pick up times for Apple Card+ customers.

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A fairly simple and hopefully obvious addition is an extended return window for products. Apple currently offers two weeks to return a purchase, but with Apple Card+, Apple could offer a full 30 days. The current window is just too short for most customers to get a good feel for some products.

One really fun idea that we have is exclusive iOS app offers. Apple could offer Apple Card+ customers special perks when it comes to things like in-app purchases, paid apps, and specialty physical orders within apps. Apple is currently offering special deals to Apple Card users who use apps like Panera, so this isn’t much of a stretch.

Lastly, Apple Card+ would require an Apple One subscription and should probably require users to meet a certain credit limit. It wouldn’t make any sense for Apple to offer Apple Card+ and all of its perks to everyone out of the gate.

So those are our ideas for Apple Card+. What ideas might you have for an improved Apple Card experience? Let us know in the comments below.

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Avatar for Parker Ortolani Parker Ortolani

Parker Ortolani is a marketing strategist and product designer based in New York. In addition to contributing to 9to5mac, he also oversees product development and marketing for BuzzFeed. A longtime reader, Parker is excited to share his product concepts and thoughts with the 9to5mac audience.

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