Apple Wallet
Apple Card, Apple Cash, and Savings connect straight from the Wallet on the user's iPhone — no Plaid, no bank login.
Plaid does not carry Apple Card, so this is the only way those accounts get in. Apple shares the data on-device with the user's permission (iOS 17.4+); the app pushes it to the backend, where transactions are enriched to look exactly like Plaid rows. Once connected, everything downstream — Home, budgets, Transactions, Accounts — treats them like any other account.
FinanceKit only exists on a physical iPhone, so none of these states can be captured on the Simulator — every state below is named, not shot.
Entry
Apple accounts live where every other card and bank does: the institution grid. Add Account → Credit Cards leads with an Apple Card tile; Checking & Savings leads with Apple Savings. Searching "apple" (or "apple card", "apple cash"…) surfaces them too. The tiles only appear on devices where FinanceKit is available; on Android, the web, or an older iPhone the grids show Plaid institutions only. Tapping a tile opens the connect flow below instead of Plaid Link. See Accounts for the rest of the catalog.
Onboarding offers the same flow: the sign-up link step shows a "Connect Apple Wallet" link (with the Apple mark) under the Plaid CTA (and again on its connected list), opening the same half sheet. An Apple-only connection satisfies the link step, so a new user can finish onboarding without a Plaid account.
Connect
Tapping the tile raises Apple's own permission sheet directly — the tile tap was the intent, so there is no explainer step (a bank tile opens Plaid Link the same way), and nothing of ours shows behind the system UI. The permission sheet is where the user picks which accounts to expose; once it resolves, the app's half sheet ("Apple Wallet — Card, Cash & Savings") rises with the result.
- Allowed — the Wallet accounts appear in the half sheet as a checklist (Apple Card, Apple Cash, Savings), each with its balance, all preselected. Already-connected accounts show a dimmed Connected badge. Add n accounts creates them and imports full history ("Importing your transaction history — this can take a moment…"), then lands on the Accounts tab.
- Declined — the half sheet explains access is off and offers Open Settings, since iOS only asks once.
After connecting
Accounts appear under Credit (Apple Card) or Cash (Apple Cash / Savings) with Apple as the institution. New purchases sync when the app comes to the foreground (at most every 15 minutes); on iOS 26+ a background delivery extension picks up Wallet changes while the app is closed, so the next open — or a scheduled background pass — is already up to date.
Balances come from the Wallet too. Apple keeps a running record of each account's balance on the iPhone (back to when the device reached iOS 17.4), so connecting imports that whole record on its real dates: the account row shows the current balance right away, and the line graph on the account's detail page is drawn from Apple's own history instead of being rebuilt from transactions. Every later sync adds whatever has changed since.
To pull the latest Wallet data on demand, open the account's detail page and choose Refresh from the menu in the top-right corner (the same menu holds Disconnect Apple Wallet); the line under the account name reads "Syncing…" until the balances and transactions land. Refresh works on the iPhone the account was connected from, since that is where Apple keeps the data.
Transactions arrive categorized with merchant names and logos, and count toward budgets, alerts, and transfer matching exactly like bank activity.
Disconnect
On the account's detail page (or a long-press on its Accounts-tab row): Disconnect Apple Wallet. The confirm names what happens — the account and its synced transactions are removed, and it can be reconnected anytime from Add Account.
Related
- Accounts — the tab, catalog, and detail these accounts live in
- Transactions — where synced purchases post
- Home — Safe to Spend, which Apple Card spend feeds