'Apple Card Family' will let card owners limit access to family members

Apple Card Wallet app on iOS
Apple Card Wallet app on iOS (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • The rumored "Apple Card Family" feature has some new leaks.
  • The feature will let Apple Card owners choose two different types of sharing for family members.
  • This will limit what users like kids see about the card, while someone like a spouse can see more.

New evidence is piling up on the idea that Apple will introduce a new "Apple Card Family" feature that will let Apple Card owners share their credit card with their family member using Family Sharing.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the feature, which is internally codenamed "Madison," will let Apple Card owners share their card with family members and set individual spending limits for each user. In addition, it appears that users will also be able to choose between two different types of sharing that limit what shared-to users see about the card.

9to5Mac has now discovered that Apple Card users will be able to choose between two different types of sharing. With "Allow Spending Only," guest users will not have access to the total balance, settings, and transaction history. To enable these features for guest members, the card owner must select the option "Become Co-Owners."

It looks like those who are invited may also be able to choose if they want to simply be an authorized user of a card or an actual co-owner of the card as well.

Interestingly, if you invite a family member as a Co-Owner, the Wallet app will offer the option for the invited member to have their own credit score in bureaus instead of sharing the same credit score. To do this, the invited person must provide their Social Security number to Goldman Sachs Bank in order to enable separate credit reporting.

This would be a low-key groundbreaking feature for Apple Card to make possible. While adding authorized users to a credit card is the everyday business of the credit industry, changing an individual credit card into a joint credit card is a feature that is lacking with many financial institutions.

Authorized users are able to make purchases on a card but do not share any of the responsibility for the card, while co-owners share the same level of responsibility of the credit card and both owner's credit scores will be impacted.

Apple has also launched two new promotions for Apple Card users this month, giving new and existing users the ability to earn upwards of 6% Daily Cash on purchases.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.