On March 25, 2019, Apple announced its new Apple Card payment service.
The presentation took place at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. The virtual bank card will be released this summer and will be available only to US residents. In order to become the owner of a commission-free and interest-free card, users will only need to register with Apple Wallet, the company said.
The service, which includes a virtual Apple card, will monitor consumer spending statistics in real time and sort purchases into categories using Touch ID and Face ID technologies. The Apple Card will be credited with 2% of the amount spent for the whole day, and for purchases in the Apple Store - 3%.
The company also introduced a physical version of the Apple Card with a cashback of 1%. The card will display a minimal amount of information - instead of an identification number and a security code, only the name of the owner.
At the same time, the company talked about making changes to the news platform. The new version of Apple News+ allows you to subscribe to more than 300 publications for $9.99 per month or $120 per year. The list includes The Wall Street Journal, Billboard, Vogue, The New Yorker, Esquire and Men's Health - more than 300 publications in total. Apple noted that the total cost of a subscription to all the newspapers and magazines on the list is about $8,000 per year.
The company also introduced the Apple Arcade subscription game service, which will be available on the App Store. The service will include more than 100 premium games without in-app purchases. Finally, Apple has announced its own streaming channel. Apple TV+ subscribers will have access to original films and series from HBO, Showtime, Starz, and others. Today, the platform is available in more than 100 countries around the world, Russia is not on the list.