Transcription
So, were you aware that your iPhone can let you go through a transit gate without using Face ID or Touch ID? Or that you can send money between two people via iMessage and the Apple Cash Card without needing to download something like a Venmo or a cash app? Most people think the Apple Wallet is purely for Apple Pay, but they aren't aware that it can do so much more than just store a store of payment like a credit card or a debit card.
So, in this video, I'm going to walk you guys through some of the best features that Apple Wallet has for you that really goes under the radar, especially in Apple's ecosystem and how it's pretty much at this point replaced my entire physical wallet. And for more and more people, it'll get to that point, too. So, let's get right into it.
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But now, let's talk about the first one, which is this awesome express transit mode. Let me explain. So the first one that I want to mention here, so just for context sake, I am using a 17 Pro running 26.3 RC, but everything that I show you here should be available in pretty much anything in the most recent years when it comes to iOS except the order tracking. And that's with 26.0 and newer, but we'll touch on that in a little bit.
The first thing I want to show off is going to be this idea of a default card and express card as well when it comes to quality of life features and what makes this so appealing to replace your physical wallet. So, if we go into our wallet application, you can see that everything is laid out nicely. So, you mostly have your actual credit card and debit cards lined up here, as well as your keys to certain devices or certain things. So, for instance, I have my key to my car right here, as well as the key to my house, which is right here, the home. And I also have my world of high card over here, which is something that's frequently used as a key card for my hotel access when needed. And then from a visual standpoint, you can see that down here is going to be my Sapphire Reserve card. The card that's going to be at the front here is always going to be your default card. Meaning, if I double tap on the lock button to bring up Apple Pay, the default card will be that Sapphire Reserve card because it is that card that's all the way at the bottom and can be visibly seen.
There's two ways to change your default card. The first one is going to be in your settings, which is the more traditional way. So, we go into our settings. Go into our Apple Wallet where it says Apple Wallet and Apple Pay. Go into your Apple Card defaults down here. As you can see, hopefully I'm going to blur out all the information, but if we go into the top section right here, it says default card. And this is where you're going to be able to decide which one your default card is going to be.
The second way to do this, you can kind of see it with the animation down here, is if we go back into our wallet, you actually hold and drag on each individual credit card. So, for instance, if I want my Apple card to be my in my main card, I just bring it down here and you get a little prompt that says Apple Card is now your default card moving forward. So, that's one way to change up what your default card is going to be when you are paying. So, now if I double click on here, you can see that the Apple Card is going to be the card that I pay with. I very rarely use the Apple card anymore because again I'm big into points and miles and not really cash back. But that's a completely different subject. So we go back into our wallet. If I want to use again my Sapphire Reserve as my main card, bring it down here and then you can see that it's now my default card.
But now in the very beginning of the video I mentioned that you can go through some sort of transit gate or a turn style and by default just tap your phone without actually having to bring up the double tap for the Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. And that's going to be something called an express card or express transit card. This is actually can work in more than a couple of ways. It works, of course, with public transportation, which is big here in New York City, and it's very easy to set this up. Again, we go into our settings, go back into our wallet in Apple Pay. If you go down here, you can see that we have an express transit card. If we tap on the express transit card, you can then decide which one is going to be used moving forward where you don't have to use Face ID or Touch ID. There's other ways of biometric unlock and other ways to again make sure that it's you holding the phone like for example your Apple Watch can help out with that and things. But again, if you're just on the move, especially in New York City where there's usually lines and people kind of moving in and out, the last thing you want to do is double tap, then hold your face up for Face ID and then tap on the terminal, you can just select, for instance, my World of High card. It'll face ID you right there to make sure that that it's actually you. It'll update it. And now moving forward, my World of Hay card, because it does get me 2x back on all public transportation, will be used as my express card. when I walk up to a turn style, it's going to be easy that way.
But another interesting thing to see here is if we go back into the wallet itself and we go into something like the my home. The my home is going to be I can have a smart lock on my front door where I can use something like my digital key, but I can also use a pin pad. I can use an NFC tag that I have and there's a bunch of different ways to unlock it, but the most efficient way is by just expresstapping your phone onto the lock itself and then it'll open up. Same thing that I mentioned before with the Express Transit card. Normally, if you don't have this set up as an express transit, then it's going to be annoying where you tap on your phone, but then it's going to ask for your face ID to unlock it, and then you have to tap it again on the lock to unlock it. Whereas, right here, you can just turn express mode on, and it says express keys work automatically without requiring Face ID or your passcode. It may be available when your iPhone needs to be charged. So, I can just walk up to my home, tap on the lock itself, and it'll unlock without needing to do a biometric unlock, saving me a couple extra steps and saving me time and headache. Again, if you don't want to do that, you can just turn it off, and then it'll turn that off.
So, this next one is actually new to iOS 26.0 and it's going to be the ability to store your physical card information in your Apple Wallet, which further again removes the need to actually have a physical wallet anymore. For those of you that are unaware, when you do add an Apple card to an Apple wallet, let's say I'm I'm looking at my Sapphire Reserve card, and then when you physically go to pay for it with Apple Pay, it's actually not using the credit card number that's associated with this Sapphire Reserve card. It's scrambling up its own version of it, and it's kind of bypassing it, which helps from a privacy standpoint. It helps from storing a card standpoint. So, when you do tap on it, it's actually using a different card number. So, to kind of show off what this looks like, if you go into the three dots right here, and then go into card details, then go down to card information. I'm going to blur out what it says right here. The top portion of this is going to be the physical card information. But down here where it says Apple Pay, this is the actual credit card number, quote unquote, that's used when you Apple Pay. Prior to the 26.0 update, the only credit card number that was stored on the phone was this kind of like fake one or this mock one that Apple Pay created. But now you can store the physical card information on top here and you can edit it as you see fit and you can enter it manually. So for example, if I go to a card that doesn't have this. So let's go into my world of high card for instance. I actually haven't inputed the physical card information, but if I go into card information right here, you can see that it says add physical card information. If I tap on here, then I can either add it by picture or enter the card details manually and then I can do that. So if I am in a pickle and if I do need to maybe put in an actual credit card number or a physical credit card number, maybe at a retail store or online, I can then do that. Maybe they don't accept Apple Pay and I have to physically put a card number in if I don't have the physical card around me. Before 26.0, I wasn't able to actually go in here and get the individual card information, but now you can. And you can store it physically into these cards, which is great to see. I absolutely love that feature.
Okay, now let's talk about Apple Cash, cuz this one is one that goes underrated a lot of the time as well. So, right here, you can see that it has something called an Apple Cash. And every single iPhone when you open up the Apple Wallet and set it up, it gets an Apple Cash card created for it. And think about this as kind of like a prepaid card or almost like a debit card that can be used because again you can connect it to your bank account. You can add money to it. You can use this as kind of like a secondary bank account to then send money the same way that you would send money via Venmo, but instead of that you use it via your Apple cash card. But what I like about this is that something new that came to the Apple Card was going to be Tap to Cash, which is very, very cool. And basically imagine using your iPhone as its own payment terminal to accept and receive cash the same way that you would do it via Venmo or something like that. So, if you tap into the Apple Cash, what's nice about this is that it also acts as a debit card. So, you can use this via Apple Pay however you see fit, the same way that you would use any other credit card or debit card, which is great to see. But what I'm going to show here is going to be the send a request button. You tap on here and actually a little Easter egg. If you move it around, you can see that the colors on the card change. I love that little gyroscope, a little Easter egg. But we'll tap on send to receive. We'll tap on tap to cash here. We'll test it with a dollar. Let it do its thing. It's going to ask you to double click to confirm. And now you get this animation. So now if you hold this up to somebody else who has their Apple cash card open, you can then tap the same way that you would tap to pay. And then that dollar gets sent to them and it gets sent to their Apple cash card. And then when you're done with that, then you can either withdraw it or send do whatever you see fit. So for instance, I have $15 on my Apple cash card. I can click on the three dots and add money to it or transfer to bank, do recurring payments, look at the card details if I want to. Again, this is treated like a normal card or another store of value if you want, which is awesome to see. And also, if you have something like the Apple Card, the credit card itself, and you have the cash [clears throat] back enabled, the cash back will be rewarded to you the same day, but it'll be sent into this Apple Cash account, and then you can withdraw it to your actual bank account if you want to. But I like to just have this turned on. And again, I use this more than VMO and Cash App and Zel even because again, it's very easy within iMessage, just press this plus button, press Apple Cash, and then within the $15, I can press the send button. You know, I can send to who the recipient is. Even now inside of group chats, only the recipient that I select will be able to receive that Apple cash as an example and then you'll be good to go. So the Apple cash card again, it's a debit card. It's a way to store extra money. It's kind of like a bank account which is associated with your credit card or Apple Card as well. And then if you have an Apple card, it's also associated with going that high savings account, but now it's also a POS or a payment terminal. So so many things that you can do with the Apple cash card that not a lot of people talk about. So if you use it, leave a comment down below and let me know what you use it for.
Now, this next one I do want to show off. Again, not every state has it, but every single time I make a video about the Apple Card, more and more states are going to be having to add this. But if you press the plus sign right here, you have the ability to add a driver's license and ID. As you can see here, you can set up a digital ID, which anybody can kind of make now at this point, which is basically like an online passport for you to set up. And then you have the individual IDs on a per state basis. I believe there are 12 states now that offer this. So, Arizona all the way down to West Virginia. And then also, you also have one for Japan as well. I'm in New Jersey. Unfortunately, New Jersey has still not adopted this. I'm still waiting for the day that it can be adopted. Adoption is a little slower than anticipated, but once you are set up in here, this is pretty much depending on your state. So, don't quote me. Look at your own state regulations and things like that, but it does replace your physical card for some states, even some states on here that are on here. It does replace your ID in some states that are listed here. So, definitely look into your own regulations. If you are in Arizona, make sure that you don't actually need your physical card. But it's good to know that you'll at least always have a backup of your physical card digitally in your Apple Wallet.
And then something else that was added to the Apple Wallet is going to be the order tracking. So, if we go into the three dots and I click on orders right here, you can see that I have a couple orders. Now, I wish this works a little bit better, but if you do pretty much order via Apple Pay a lot of the time, then it'll be easy to kind of look up here. And it's in beta still technically, but it's like a live beta or a public beta where it does look through your mail as well. So, if you use the Apple native mail app, this works pretty well. but it lets you track your orders in real time. So, you can see that everything is placed. You can even see like look, here is the the item number, here is the information. It'll tell you all the order information, when it's going to be shipped and things like that. So, I like this when it does work. When it does work, it works fantastically. And you get up-to-date milestones to where your tracking information is and where your item is moving forward.
Another amazing one is the ability to share keys that are in your digital wallet. As you can see here, yes, there are credit cards here, but I also have a key look for my car right here. So, as you can see, this is going to be a digital key, which is separate from the application, but you're able to share this amongst other people if you want to. So, you can have the privileges set up. You can have the terms and policies. Again, this is going to be on a per kind of provider basis. So, depending on what Rivian's doing and depending on what the applications are doing, but you can also share this if I want to. So, I can share the Rivian key. I can add people if I want to. So, this is going to be very beneficial in a bunch of different scenarios. Again, this is a car key. I also have my home right here. So, if I press on the info, there's a personal access code that I can click on here to invite people. I'm not going to press on that cuz then I can't show people. And then even like I said with my World of Hyatt one, if I do sign up for it, if I do check into a hotel, this becomes my hotel key card, which then I can then send and share with my wife or my spouse or whatever the case may be for whoever else is sharing that hotel room. So they don't have to have the physical card anymore. They can just use the digital card that's right here.
And then the last really good quality of life one that I love of the Apple Wallet is going to be the automation and the auto recognition of the stuff in your Apple Wallet. So, for instance, we recently went to Florida and we flew on United. I'm going to see if I can look at my expired passes over here. So, you have the expired passes. You can tap on here. This was the expired one. So, when basically when I was within 24 hours or 48 hours, which was when I was like to actually check in, this showed up as a light activity on my lock screen, which is amazing. And then when we got to the actual airport, when I was already checked in, it would actually pull up the priority pass and it would pull up the actual boarding pass whenever I was there without me needing to actually go to the Apple Wallet. It would just show up on my lock screen. I would tap on there, it would ask for my face ID, and then I was able to use my boarding pass as I see fit. So, it uses recognition of location, recognition of everything that's around you to understand where you are, what time of day it is in association to that flight, in association to whatever you're doing, and then it'll pop that up for you to again reduce the amount of steps needed to get to where you need to be.
So, the Apple Wallet again has gotten amazing over time. So, those are the main things that I wanted to share with you. Leave a comment down below if you guys want to see another kind of holistic roundup of the Apple Wallet card because it is fantastic and I plan on doing an Apple Card review in 2026 here soon. But let's finish up the video, everybody.
So, as you saw, the Apple Wallet has a ton of different features and it's not just for Apple Pay payments at the grocery store or at a retail store. It can do so much more than that. You can store your IDs, your loyalty cards, you can tap to pay and use it as its own terminal if you are vending or selling something. So again, the Apple Wallet continues to impress me more and more as it evolves with iOS 26 and hopefully iOS 27 moving forward. There's a couple little things in there that definitely need improvement like the order tracking and maybe some Apple intelligence integrations, but overall the Apple Wallet has completely replaced my physical wallet besides my ID. Even at that point in my state, most people just take a picture form of your ID. So in a pickle, you really don't need your wallet anymore. But let me know with a comment down below what you think. Are any of these features new to you? Did you learn something new? Do you use your Apple wallet? Are you a fan of Apple Pay? Or are you kicking it old school and you still have all your physical wallets in a actual wallet that's maybe this thick? Let me know in the comment down below. But that'll do it. If you guys made it to the end, leave a little dolphin. And if you guys want to watch more videos like this one, check out one of these videos right here. And until next time, I'm Fernando. Peace, everyone.