Apple Cash and Apple Payments Inc. & Privacy

Card-related information, location, device settings, and device use patterns will be sent to Apple and may be shared together with account information to set up Apple Cash.
 

Apple Cash is designed to help you send and receive money in a secure and private way.

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  • Apple created Apple Payments Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary, to protect your privacy by storing how much you sent, to whom, and your balance separately from the rest of Apple.
  • When you use Apple Cash in apps and on the web, information necessary to process the payment is shared with the app or website. Your actual Apple Cash account number isn’t shared with the merchant.
  • Apple Cash data that can no longer be tied to you may be used by Apple to improve Apple Pay and other Apple products and services.

Apple Cash allows you to send and receive money from other people and to receive disbursements from and make direct payments to eligible businesses.

Making Person to Person Payments and Using Apple Cash (United States Only)

Apple Cash allows you to send and receive money from other people in Messages, Wallet, and using Siri. When you receive money, it’s added to your Apple Cash card that can be used to make purchases using Apple Pay in stores, in apps, and on the web. Person to person payments and the Apple Cash account are services provided by Apple’s partner bank, Green Dot Bank.

Setting Up Apple Cash

When you set up Apple Cash, your identifying information and contact information, as well as the same information as when you add a credit or debit card may be shared with Green Dot Bank and with Apple Payments Inc.

Apple created Apple Payments Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary and licensed money transmitter, to protect your privacy. Your Apple Cash account registration information (name, address), balance, transaction amount, and to which individuals you send money are stored separately by Apple Payments Inc. in a way that the rest of Apple doesn’t know. Your personal data stored with Apple Payments Inc. is used only to provide you services that you request, for troubleshooting, regulatory purposes, and to prevent fraud.

In addition, Apple Inc. will know if you have enabled Apple Cash, or used Apple Cash services, such as whether you have enabled Apple Cash Family. This information will be used only to help you discover and use Apple Cash and Apple Pay features.

Verifying Your Identity

You may be asked to provide information, including your name, address, and social security number, to the bank and their identity verification service provider to verify your identity and to comply with banking regulations. Information you provide to verify your identity will be used only for fraud prevention and to comply with United States financial regulations. Your name and address are securely stored by the partner bank and Apple Payments Inc. If needed to verify your identity, you may be asked to provide additional information, such as date of birth, answers to questions (for example, confirming a street name you have previously lived on), or a copy of your government ID. This additional information cannot be read by Apple Inc.

To help prevent fraud while protecting your privacy, your device may evaluate information about specific device and account use patterns, such as events indicative of scams or familiarity with a sender or recipient, and generate risk assessments designed to help prevent fraud. These risk assessments — but not the underlying information — are shared identifiably with Apple Payments Inc. and in a way that cannot be linked to you with Apple Inc., are stored for a limited time, and are used in fraud decisions to safeguard your money when using Apple Cash (for example, preventing scams), prevent unauthorized use, and help ensure the overall safety of the Apple Cash platform. For example, when you provision Apple Cash, just as when you add a card to Apple Pay, your device may evaluate device use patterns (for example, percent of time device is in motion, approximate number of calls per week). No content of your communication is collected. Transactions requiring further analysis due to suspicious activity may be retained and linked to you. You can view which transactions required further analysis due to suspicious activity by going to your Apple Cash card transaction history.

Information Shared When You Use Apple Cash

When you use Apple Cash, including when you add money or transfer money to a bank account, our partner bank, Apple Inc., and Apple Payments Inc. may use and store information about you, your device, and your bank account in order to process the transaction, prevent fraud, and comply with financial regulations. This information is similar to that processed when you add a credit or debit card, but does not include the location of your device. If you have enabled Location Services for Wallet, your device will also evaluate information about your device’s location to develop on-device fraud prevention assessments. The output of the assessments, but not the underlying data, will be sent to Apple Payments Inc. We may also share information with our partner bank or Apple Inc. for fraud prevention and to help provide you with support. Apple Payments Inc. will store and use your transaction data for troubleshooting, to prevent fraud, and to comply with financial regulations.

When you send or request money in Messages or Wallet, your Apple ID, email address, or phone number will be shown to the people you transact with. To select or change the contact information shown when sending or requesting from Messages or Wallet, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. When you transfer money to a bank account, your bank information, including account number and routing number, will be stored within iCloud Keychain to simplify future transfers. This information is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple Inc. or Apple Payments Inc.

Direct Payments and Disbursements

Apple Cash uses Apple Payments Inc. to allow participating businesses that you authorize to disburse funds directly to your Apple Cash account. Apple Payments Inc. also provides the Direct Payments Service, which allows you to use funds in your Apple Cash account to make payments to certain businesses that you authorize.

Information about disbursements you receive or direct payments that you make is used by Green Dot Bank and Apple Payments Inc. only to provide the service you have requested, to troubleshoot, to comply with applicable laws, and to prevent fraud for these transactions. Apple Payments Inc. retains transaction records, including transactions flagged as suspicious, as required by federal and state law for a period of up to five years.

To help ensure that any recurring or other merchant-initiated charges like subscriptions are authorized by you, when you choose to use Apple Cash as a payment method with participating merchants for recurring or merchant-initiated charges, Green Dot Bank and Visa will approve and generate a merchant-specific account number using Apple Pay’s merchant token feature to be used for such charges. Only that merchant-specific account number can be used by the specific participating merchant to authorize transactions without requiring you taking a specific action. Apple Inc. will know which merchants are associated with your merchant-specific account numbers, but not what you purchased or how much you paid for it. You can manage your Apple Cash merchant-specific account numbers in Wallet by tapping your Apple Cash card and tapping the More button to view card details.

When you use Apple Cash for a recurring payment to a friend or to automatically reload your Apple Cash balance, Apple Cash requests and stores a merchant token associated with your Apple Pay debit card(s) to securely authorize recurring transactions. Merchant token generation relies on Apple Inc. infrastructure, so Apple Inc. will know that you have set up a either a recurring payment or auto reload, and the amount — but doesn’t know with whom you’re transacting or the memo you associated with the payment.

Closing Your Apple Cash Account

If you close your Apple Cash account, information about the account, including transaction history, will be retained as required by law and for fraud prevention.

Apple Cash Family

When Family Sharing is enabled, a Family Organizer may allow family members under the age of 18, including those under the age of 13, to use Apple Cash. Apple will use information provided in the Apple Cash Family onboarding flow and share such information with Green Dot Bank to set up the child account. Information about the Apple Cash account will also be shared with Green Dot Bank to provide the account, prevent fraud, and comply with law.

Family Organizers may limit to whom a child may send money using Messages; anyone can send money to the child’s account. Apple will store the restriction to enforce the Family Organizer’s choices. The Family Organizer may view and change the Apple Cash child account settings at any time by tapping their Apple Cash card in Wallet, selecting Family Sharing Settings > Family Sharing > Apple Cash and tapping the child’s name.

Family Organizers, and parents and legal guardians will also be able to view the balance and full transaction history for a child account, including amounts, dates, and entities or persons transacted with. Additional transaction details may also be shown if available, such as descriptions provided in the memo field of a transaction in Messages. To view the child account transaction history, tap the Apple Cash card in Wallet, select Family Sharing Settings > Family Sharing > Apple Cash > [child’s name] > Transactions.

Children aged 13 and over may load funds onto their Apple Cash account. Any loading of funds will be visible to the account owner.

When a child turns 18, they can request to take ownership of their linked account and graduate it to a standalone Apple Cash account. Upon graduation, Family Organizers and parents or legal guardians will no longer be able to access the child’s account information or information about the child’s past or future Apple Cash transactions. The graduated account will continue to see information about transactions that occurred prior to graduation.

If the child leaves the Family, the linked child account will be closed, and information about the account will be handled as described above in Closing Your Apple Cash Account.

For information on Apple’s handling of children’s personal data, see the Apple ID and Family Sharing Disclosure at www.apple.com/legal/privacy/parent-disclosure.

Other

If you initiate a complaint with your financial institution about a fraudulent Apple Cash transaction, Green Dot Bank may request that Apple share with Green Dot Bank certain information relating to the disputed transaction to help respond to your inquiry, such as the IP address, Apple ID, telephone number, and a device identifier. Green Dot Bank may share this transaction-related information with your financial institution and the payment network (for example, Visa or American Express) for fraud prevention. You can learn more about how Green Dot Bank protects and shares your personal data by reviewing their privacy policy at https://applecash.greendot.com/privacy.

Apple retains personal data only for so long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including as described in this notice and in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, or as required by law. When assessing retention periods, we first carefully examine whether it is necessary to retain the personal data collected and, if retention is required, work to retain the personal data for the shortest period permissible under law.

At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy

Published Date: September 18, 2023