I’ve argued previously (as others have in the comments section on this piece) that the fragility of the iPhone is a feature, not a bug. The same is probably true of the Apple Card. Why make there a difference in rewards points, after all — you receive 1% cash back for using the physical card, but 2% back for using the card via Apple Pay — if the point wasn’t to get people to forego physical cards entirely?

Apple knows the value of its consumer. They understand that incentivizing Apple users to make purchases on the Apple Card with Apple Pay will put pressure on retailers that haven’t adopted Apple Pay to do so. Assuming this argument is true, the only point of shipping a physical card was to offer consumers an easily avoidable, objectively bad decision — i.e., use the Apple Card and earn 1% back — in favor of a good decision — that is, make purchases with the Apple Card via Apple Pay and earn 2% back. The conclusion to make here is that Apple produced a physical card not so consumers would use it, but rather so they wouldn’t.

Shipping a physical card also makes sense if you view Apple as a devices company first. Apple is certainly shifting to services, but services don’t confer status on users in the same way physical goods do. And the Apple Card just doesn’t look the same displayed on the OLED screen of an iPhone as it feels in the palm of your hand.