The process of activating your Apple Card so it can be used immediately is remarkably similar to pairing your AirPods—you just need to bring the physical card near an unlocked iPhone.
Because the physical Apple Card is a product that supports contactless payments, it’s got a little chip with NFC technology built-in that communicates with the NFC chip in your iPhone, allowing for this brand-new and seamless activation process.
Apple has been using the same NFC-based technique to power Automatic Setup, a feature that lets you bring up two iOS devices close together to copy settings from your old to your new device. The same feature can be used to set up your Apple TV using an iOS device.
In fact, this is also how you pair your AirPods, as well as your HomePod.
iOS developer and 9to5Mac contributor Guilherme Rambo has managed to capture a nice video, embedded below, that shows the activation process happening on the iOS 12.3 beta.
Guilherme commented:
This activation process is clearly not finished quite yet, but that’s to be expected given this is the first beta version of it. Another fact we learned from this first beta is that Apple Card, like many other products and projects inside Apple, has a code name.
It’s code-named internally “Broadway”, for those asking.
Apple Card has no fees whatsoever, not even hidden ones, and provides daily cash rewards on purchases: two percent when buying stuff with Apple Pay and three percent cash back on Apple products, which includes subscriptions like Apple Music, Apple News+ and iCloud storage, as well as in-app purchases and subscriptions for apps and games.
All other purchases yield one percent cash back.
The physical card uses the Mastercard payment infrastructure and acts as a regular credit card from Mastercard, meaning it’s accepted anywhere Mastercard is accepted. You can even see the little Mastercard logo outline etched on the card.
How do you like Apple Card so far?
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