The Apple Card has arrived. Will it shake up the payments world? (The Daily Charge, 8/21/2019)

Today on The Daily Charge, self driving delivery bots coming to a campus near you pop a red pill because we're going back into the matrix and lo and behold it's time to sign up for your Apple card. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to Cnet's Daily Charges. It's Wednesday, August 21. I'm Ben Fox Reuben I'm [UNKNOWN]. Sorry. Let's get to today's main storey. [SOUND] Okay the new Apple card is now available from nationwide after the invite only launched earlier this month. Apple is now taking applications for its new credit card. From any US customers, the most notable new feature of the card is that it's meant to live in the digital world allowing people to pay using their phones online. And at physical stores. There's also a fancy looking titanium card but you get less cash back when using it. All right. Not the easiest start for me. [LAUGH] But let's talk about the Apple Card. Yeah, it's from Nationwide, the insurance company. It's available nationwide. [CROSSTALK] It's definitely available nationwide, and sorry about your intro. Hey, it's okay. But anyway, I know you got this card. I did get this card. After making fun of it, I got the card immediately actually. Why did you do that? I was looking to buy a Mac and it's an expensive purchase. Obviously, one of the key features is 3% cashback on Apple purchases. So it's nice little bit of a kickback there when I. Purchase my Mac. So over $1,000. So you're looking at a decent chunk of change. Yeah, not bad. What are your thoughts here? [UNKNOWN] We're both android users, so that's the problem for us. Is that it's great for an iphone user and I kinda feel like this is another way for Apple to get people into their ecosystem even more. However, with android There's that really a way to use it Yea, as long as you have an ios device you can activate the card, see your card and maybe take that card information because there's no card number printed on the actual card and maybe put that into google pay then even if get all that working you only get 1% back because essentially you're just using the titanium card Yeah Using your phone so the advantage of doing it is really really minor It's actually probably a detriment. You might as well stick with an iPhone or your Apple Watch to make those kinds of payments. Or just not get a card. If you feel like you're not gonna use it, this is not for you, right? This is definitely For someone who lives in the apple ecosystem, who's sort of bought all in. Now, I mean, I said I just signed up for this car. I don't plan on using it as like my daily card at all. This is really for kind of one off purchases, but 3% cashback on Uber rides, which they just announced. And Uber Eats. And Uber Eats. Is a nice benefit.So I could see myself using it sparingly, but I also know that if this becomes my daily card, I'm further locked into the the Apple ecosystem. I have an Android phone too. So using both, I'm cognizant that I don't want to keep getting myself further locked in. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. They wanna make it really heavily tied to the wallet app. Yep And that's basically how you use it. One of the other dimensions that's interesting about this card is that there are a lot of budgeting features. Not only do they have no late fees, no international fees, no annual fee, but also if you open up The wallet app, I don't know if you've had much time to look at this, they encourage people to actually pay more so they pay less in interest per month. And they also have what your weekly spending is, which if you wanna know how much you spend on Starbucks or how much you spend on gas, Those are a couple elements there that they seem to do a pretty good job with. And do you think that you might end up using that kind of thing? Not so much. Like I said, I don't think I'm gonna use this regularly. But if I were to use it, those tools are super handy. I've got other apps meant to kind of where I do kinda look at how my spending pattern changes over time, but Credit card companies generally don't have those tools at their fingertips. Or they're harder to find. Or they're harder to find. So like having this stuff kinda be up front on your phone is really beneficial for most people. You can see how people could get freaked out about giving their login information about their credit cards to [UNKNOWN] or Clarity or these other kinds of third party ones. If it's your actual credit card company giving these tools in a nice visual way, I mean, I'm sure Apple's got this great way of doing it. I've seen it on their websites. Very very visual big dials and stuff Yeah. It's almost like Apple Health but for finances. It's really simple to see, and there are a lot of other tools that do that and you would, Ben you would tell me other credit card companies have been kind of doing this. Yeah. I used Chase and Chase does have certain budgeting tools that are like they show you. What you're spending is they've been trying to lean into that a little bit one. But it's not nearly as a front and it's obviously not as like graphically exciting as Apple has been trying to do. So that has been interesting. But I'm certainly curious to see what Apple ends up doing with this. They've teamed up with Goldman and MasterCard with it. So we'll see where it goes from there. Anyway, happening elsewhere in the news today, the San Francisco startup, Starship Technologies, is planning on bringing self-driving delivery robots to 100 campuses, mostly in the US, in the next two years. The company says its squat, six-wheeled bots will deliver breakfast, late night snacks, and groceries for the low, low price of $1.99 per delivery. I wish this existed when I was in college, we like Yeah, the lazy part of me does too but also the paranoid part of me is like I just look at black mirrors Metalhead episode. This is how it begins harmless delivery drones that evolve into killer machines. That's quite a leap. Yeah, I know. I know. You get a 3D tracking, right, this thing tops out, I think at four miles an hour. That's right. This is generation one, all right? Just wait till generation ten shows up. But you can't run a four mile an hour angry bot. We've got a problem. I'm out of shape, I'm really out of shape, okay? Also, this weighs 50 pounds, you can just tip it over. True. That's kind of important and also inside will be like a delicious burrito. So, how would you run from this machine? I think it's actually an interesting idea because one of the big pushes, about these robots is that. If it's a delivery person, they don't like park a car. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is showing up on campuses. is a great idea, is that we are generally being in the public, is people like what's going on there, in a university there is a good chance everyone will know that's a delivery robot don't **** with that thing and they are also hiring students to maintain the robots, which is even more interesting, now you have >it is actually a job creator >right I mean although wouldn't this be I feel like if I'm like, like a Frank Frank bros or something would go and like destroy anything ->> That's gonna happen. Yeah, just pretty much like interesting. You mentioned that campus golf cart. So I talked to the CEO for the story I wrote about this and he mentioned that even though these are only 50 pounds in general They haven't been stolen. They haven't been messed with and it's partly because they do have alarms and security built in cameras monitoring it. Got it. They will warn people like if they're intentionally getting in the robots way to kind of try to figure out what's going on with them, they'll you know, give them certain alerts and say like, get out of my way. And then they'll alarm will sound if it realizes that you're really messing [UNKNOWN] I imagine it's not gonna be lumped for like it's spray painted with something, right? Sure. Yes. But it's interesting that we mentioned the robots taking over because finally [LAUGH] Neo is back Keanu Reeves and Carrie and Moss plan to reprise their roles in The Matrix movie series. Which by the way, it's 20 years after the first Matrix arrived. That is insane, I so old. Yes first of all were sold Second of all, no movies die anymore. And third of all didn't Neo die the first time why are they doing this? I mean this is The Matrix like he could be rebooted or resurrected it may be pretty easy plot wise right the universe Allowed itself to be fairly flexible, right? The software, software can be really- Sure, they really said that Matrix have rebooted six times in the second movie, so I think we're at seven now or whatever it is. So they've done that before. I remember watching the last two ones and realizing I've wanted my four hours of my life. If you have those last two [CROSSTALK] terrible. I think The Matrix has enough of a branded name that people are like, yeah, I know this this is good. And they forgot the other two and it's also been years. I mean, the original was amazing. If they can like rekindle the magic from the original that is totally worth it. But Definitely a high risk. That it's gonna be more like The Latitude. And one of the other issues with The Matrix in general is it was so copied and pirated and done to death in commercials, all the stuff that made it just jaw dropping. I mean, the bow/t time thing that became a cliche after a while, right? So there will have to be some new camera tricks kinds of things like that. More Better fight choreography. That was another thing that was really cool about the matrix at that time because that's really taken off. I mean in general. So to make it stand out, apart from it being green tinted, there has to be something [LAUGH] Else. Well, there's also some other movie news that came out yesterday a not well versed Yeah. Well, so the Spider Man is now sort of, he's been orphaned out of the MCU the there was a Disagreement between Sony and Disney and now Sony, which owns the rights of spider man had sort of Lent it out to Disney for using the MCU. And because they I guess couldn't come to a new terms of agreement there. They're pulling spider man out the MC so he's gonna do its own thing. There's a lot there's a there's a lot up in the air with this. We're not really sure what's gonna happen. Supposedly Tom Holland is still attached. Still attached and presumably sony is working on two more Tom Holland Spiderman movies. There was supposed to be a third one. This last one Spiderman far from home by the way kind of left with like huge cliffhanger. One for the MCU and one for the Peter Parker himself, and now like a lot of fans are wondering if any of that is resolved. Yeah, I mean, when spiderman gotinto MTU, it was a great thing. It was just like, okay, it's not a shot. And the thing is Sony has come out with at least, one great spideman movie in the past couple of years into the multiverse, spiderman excuse me, and that was a really well made film But I don't think that had the same amount of corporate like people messing with stuff. Spiderman is really valuable- Totally. You can tell that was a lot more hands-off from Sony. Right? Yeah. Cuz it was just the Lord and the Phil Gordan take- Yes. Yeah, yeah. Clearly I mean, there was a lot of creativity, and there's a lot of freedom that went into that, bu that also was not meant as like a franchise temple. Right? It wasn't supposed to be a hit. Right. And that's why it did okay. And then you saw Venom. That was supposed to be a hit. It was but man That was a terrible movie, I don't even remember that one >I felt sick like four times watching that movie>>That one was a SONY movie right? Four times? But here is the other thing Spider-Man far from home is now the number one grossing movie for SONY ever All time Displacing Skyfall and the weird thing of them going no, we are not gonna include you again Marvel since you actually made this work cuz we tried Spiderman twice actually with McGuire good good then that is right Garfield XV Marvel take it back and they fixed it. So I think Sony will be operating off of the goodwill of the Marvel version of spider man for a while especially if Tom Holland is reprising Yeah, yeah, Assuming this doesn't get worked out which it still could because The next movie isn't even kind of in development I mean it wasn't going to be a phase four movie, so there was definitekly going to be time, I think from the various reports that have come out, you knw, Disney asking Asking for much better cut revenue than Sony was looking for. So there were 50 50 as opposed to yeah 95 5. That's a pretty big difference so yeah. Imagine some of this is probably some some bargaining some posturing. Like you said there's plenty of time for them to actually get back together. Yeah. But people freaking out. We'll see what happens. For the Daily Charge, I'm Ben Fox Rubin. [UNKNOWN] Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.