What you need to know
- Apple Card doesn't have a way to download transactions in a CSV file.
- A new tool turns Apple Card's PDFs into CSVs.
- Those files can then be imported into budgeting apps.
Apple Card is proving popular, especially among those who want to be able to pick up an interest-free iPhone. But it has one big downfall in its inability to output CSV files. Thankfully, that's no longer a problem.
For the uninitiated, a CSV file – comma-separated value – is a kind of file that's often used by financial apps to export and import large amounts of financial data. Like budgeting apps. That you might want to upload your Apple Card transactions to.
See the problem?
But it's a problem you don't need to live with thanks to a new tool called csv.wtf, created by developer Jed Schmidt. It's essentially a web app and you give it your pre-downloaded Apple Card PDFs. In return, it spits out a CSV file for you to download and then do what you want with.
In an interview with CNBC, Schmidt spoke about the lack of CSV support from Apple and how surprised he was that his tool was needed at all.
"I was surprised, having adopted Apple Card pretty early, that it didn't exist," Schmidt, a former developer in residence at Union Square Ventures, said in a phone interview. "It didn't occur to me that in 2019, Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Mastercard would ship a product that has no way to export transactions. Pretty surprising."
Using the tool is free, although it will remove a random transaction from the resulting CSV every time it's used. You can prevent that by paying $5, which seems like money very well spent indeed.
No doubt the first issue many will be contemplating now is one of privacy. But don't worry, Schmidt says that the files that you upload never actually leave your device and never reach his servers. He couldn't see how much you spend at Taco Bell if he wanted to.
Phew!
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
