Ignoring these presumably temporary rollout problems, is APC finally going to allow anonymous cashless transactions? i.e., can one create an APC account via a pre-paid gift card without any real, personally-identifying data? Once funds are on the account, it seems at that point any point-of-sale purchases would be completely anonymous, almost as good as cash. Or is this not possible yet?
I see that someone later replied to you regarding the pre-paid gift card capability, but I'm going to address your "completely anonymous" comment.
iMessage is attached to your phone and knows your phone number, and probably your email address. No matter the anonymity of the card used to pay, the fact of the transaction itself is not anonymous. Whether or not the details of the transaction can be discerned is another question, but the fact of the transaction is, or can be, known.
So unless you're willing to go to a lot of trouble, i.e. buying an iPhone with cash, declining to give any personal information to the seller, using a new Apple ID unconnected with any of your other accounts, using a pay-as-you-go carrier such as Cricket or StraightTalk, never attaching the phone to your home wi-fi, never actually bringing your phone to your residence or workplace (tower triangulation is a thing), never calling or texting with your family members, and a few other precautions, you ain't gonna be anonymous.
Hey, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.
Thanks for the info, but I've already considered all the things you mentioned (and more). Phone was indeed purchased with cash, via craigslist. The appleID I use on that device is completely unassociated with any real-world person/data. Better than pay-as-you-go, I don't have any cell service on this phone at all, it's basically a wonderful large-screen iPodTouch with touchID. As for never attaching to my home wifi, I do, but it sits behind a firewall that severely limits what servers it can reach; i.e. not even Apple. Because it has been in airplane mode since the day I purchased it, I'm not worried about triangulation tracking. Obviously, without cell service I don't call or text anyone. I don't use iMessage, but because it doesn't require a phone number, I did set it up at one point to do some testing, so I know it works.
I'm always bothered when I hear so-called privacy advocates talk about how annoyed they are with various human behavior profiling services that they use. I'm not hypocritical, I talk the talk and I walk the walk. This is but a fraction of the stuff I pay attention to. And yes, convenience is the enemy of privacy, so some of what I do is inconvenient, but it's not that bad when it's baked into your life. It's a trade off, and I'm not comfortable playing into the hands of data miners.
So back to the issue at hand. I'm still interested in whether this will work with a pre-paid debit card and/or as a place for others to send funds without being associated with a "named" debit card. Mostly I'm looking on as an observer, and probably wouldn't use it much in any case, but I'd like to know what the full range of options are. Remember in the early days of the iTunes store, most people assumed that you needed to attach the account to a real/named credit card, but it was possible to bypass that whole process and simply use iTunes gift cards, which I continue to do to this day. So until someone actually digs in on this, I don't think we know for sure what's possible. Unless there's a URL someone can point me to that says otherwise.
And the adage you wrote at the end of your post is so true. It should be the motto for the 2010s.
I updated to iOS 11.2, and the Cash card showed up in my wallet, but when I tried to activate it, I got an "unavailable" message. So, I went to Settings --> Wallet & Apple Pay to try toggling off/on the Apple Pay Cash button to see if that did anything. I turned Apple Pay Cash off, but once off, the toggle completely disappeared, and now there is apparently no way to turn it back on.
Also, the Apple Pay Cash card is now gone from my Wallet.
Within the Messages App, I still see the ApplePay sub-app, but when I tap it, it says "Apple Pay Cash has been turned off on this device" and it offers a button to "Open Settings," presumably to turn Cash back on. However, while that button takes me into the Wallet & Apple Pay settings, there is no way now to turn Apple Pay Cash back on because the toggle is gone!! Doh!
Just do a force restart and it'll appear.
Force restart = Hold down the Home button and the Power button at the same time for about 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo on screen again. I don't know how to do a force restart for an iPhone X.
Seems Apple's forgotten about the world outside the USA again...
Well Apple is a U.S. company!!! So Apple is going to start here first. Besides there's all kinds of issues to deal with in other countries. Then there's exchange rates, etc. It'll spread around just like Apple Pay has been doing. Maybe faster to those countries already supporting Apple Pay.
Where's the European OS and phones? It always seems to be the U.S. WIndows, Linux, iOS, Android. Symbian? I guess, long list of issues and now DEAD. Samsungs Tizen? Not going anywhere.
Since the complex work with external companies (i.e. banks) is done and Apple Pay is already supported here, it can't be much more work to add the cash option to other countries, especially ones with big markets and similar financial systems to the US, such as the UK. It's the same with the AppleTV and the TV app, no sign of it here over a year after the US got it. Makes the AppleTV a pretty expensive AirPlay server and not much else.
Oh and you'll find a Brit invented the web, British Alan Turing was instrumental in designing the first computer, and Cambridge's (the real one, not the US one) ARM powers pretty much every smartphone in the world. The GPUs in iPhones are designed by a UK company, and Ive is British too. Apple has a lot of British tech in its devices, but rewards us with high prices and slow rollouts.
Would you like some cheese with your whine? Yes, I'm sure Apple just purposely chooses to piss all over the UK. Who really gives a shit about what Brit did this and where this or that comes from etc. That doesn't mean a damn thing. Get over yourself already...
Who really gives a shit about Alan Turing?
Me.
I give a shit about Alan Turing ... and so do “a few” others, I’m reliably informed.
Comments
I'm always bothered when I hear so-called privacy advocates talk about how annoyed they are with various human behavior profiling services that they use. I'm not hypocritical, I talk the talk and I walk the walk. This is but a fraction of the stuff I pay attention to. And yes, convenience is the enemy of privacy, so some of what I do is inconvenient, but it's not that bad when it's baked into your life. It's a trade off, and I'm not comfortable playing into the hands of data miners.
So back to the issue at hand. I'm still interested in whether this will work with a pre-paid debit card and/or as a place for others to send funds without being associated with a "named" debit card. Mostly I'm looking on as an observer, and probably wouldn't use it much in any case, but I'd like to know what the full range of options are. Remember in the early days of the iTunes store, most people assumed that you needed to attach the account to a real/named credit card, but it was possible to bypass that whole process and simply use iTunes gift cards, which I continue to do to this day. So until someone actually digs in on this, I don't think we know for sure what's possible. Unless there's a URL someone can point me to that says otherwise.
And the adage you wrote at the end of your post is so true. It should be the motto for the 2010s.
Force restart = Hold down the Home button and the Power button at the same time for about 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo on screen again. I don't know how to do a force restart for an iPhone X.
Me.
I give a shit about Alan Turing ... and so do “a few” others, I’m reliably informed.