has begun advertising Apple Pay promotions via notifications, and while iPhone users are losing their mind, they can toggle the feature off starting in iOS 26.

Apple Wallet tells people how to save money with notification and in-app promotion feature

Advertising has become a blunt instrument in surveillance capitalism largely as a result of Google’s success. This shouldn’t mean we reject the premise of advertising as a whole, given that for now, it remains the fuel for the content engine on the Internet.

Ads can run from silly and useless to invasive and annoyingly persistent. Somewhere in the middle is a genuinely useful tool for consumers.

This discussion has been prompted by Apple letting advertising creep into yet another facet of its business — Apple Wallet. Users were surprised on Tuesday to discover an ad sent via push notification for $10 off two tickets to see the F1 movie when paid for via Apple Pay on Fandango.

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Ignoring the fact that movie, concert, and plane tickets live in Apple Wallet, the negative reactions are understandable, as Apple has increased its use of advertising across its ecosystem into various places. This includes Apple TV, Apple Music, the App Store, and even Settings.

However, I believe there has been a bit of an over-correction in recent years when it comes to advertising. And, the over-reaction to the ad in Wallet today is out of proportion.

Because, if you don’t like the F1 ad and others like it from Wallet, there’s a toggle to turn them off, permanently, coming in iOS 26. It can be found in the Wallet app by tapping the ellipsis in the top right, tapping notifications, and it is the bottom toggle.

Vertical integration of hardware and services

Apple clearly set this up with Fandango as a way to promote Apple Pay, the Apple Wallet ticket function, and F1 in one swing. It is ecosystem synergy at its finest.

As an Apple user and someone that uses Apple Wallet, Apple Pay, and plans to see F1 this weekend, the promotion is dialed in perfectly for me. Of course, Apple sent the notification to everyone, not just me, and that’s triggered some anger from iPhone users.

Apple’s use of advertising about itself versus paid ads in Apple News are totally different subjects. I think that Apple’s system apps providing notifications or banners are fine, but at the same time I believe Apple News ads to paid subscribers are an abomination that should be scrapped and rethought.

Apple’s placement ads in Apple News are just plain bad

If Apple is going to continue bringing more ads to iPhone, it needs to ensure it can maintain user trust. Stick to advertising Apple Services and device functions and avoid taking advantage of enabled notifications like Uber Eats might, which shows ads for food discounts when it should be showing delivery status.

Apple Wallet will likely get more notifications about promotions in the future. There’s a toggle present in iOS 26 that lets users turn off all promotions in Apple Wallet that weren’t available previously, so use that if you like.

Even if you’re not getting the push notification, realize that promotions are viewable at any time via the Apple Card section of Apple Wallet. Tap the ellipsis in the top right corner, then “Rewards and Offers” to see active promotions.

Apple has to earn the right to use its system notifications and in-app banners for advertising like any other app, and I believe it has so far. If Apple breaks that trust, the outrage will be swift and necessary.

The education problem

Apple is a big company and it has a lot of devices, services, and partnerships that its multiple billions of users could take advantage of. The problem is, users can’t and likely won’t know about any or all of these ecosystem benefits without being told.

Apple should always offer toggles when it comes to promotions and ads

There’s really only two ways a consumer can be informed about such things — Apple waits patiently for them to seek out information themselves, or they push the information out via advertising. This advertising can and does take on many forms, from the Today view in the App Store to AppleCare coverage details in the Settings app.

The thing is, these are actually quite useful to consumers, even if they are annoying to some of them. Yes, you paid some thousand plus dollars for the device and you don’t expect ads, but that’s a blanket view likely brought on by advertising fatigue.

For example, YouTube is so dominated by ads you likely spend more time watching ad breaks for nonsense than you do actual content. So, users have no choice but to pay for YouTube Premium and block those ads to get a proper viewing experience.

Sure, advertisers get paid when users see the ads, and Google makes money from selling those ads, but the persistence and annoying nature of the ad breaks is the point. It is a form of psychological warfare that has programmed us to instantly reject all ads and pay premiums to get rid of them.

So, when an ad comes along, we automatically reject them even though the service or product would be useful to the individual. Apple One is a genuinely good service that many iPhone users would benefit from, but not everyone on Earth reads AppleInsider, so consumers need a way to be informed broadly, and that’s via advertisement.

Apple proves advertising can be good, actually

I wholly reject how Google, Amazon, and the others have monetized the internet through data collection and privacy violations. The weaponization of ads helped lead to the destruction of the internet thanks to Search Engine Optimization and LLMs.

What started as a promise to websites like AppleInsider as a way to show up in search and monetize our platform has turned into a tool that is slowly shuttering businesses. Ad revenue has been on the decline for years thanks to cuts from Google, and now it’s using its access and data to render websites useless with summarized, and incorrect, search results.

Advertising is a necessary part of the free and open web. You’ll see ads on AppleInsider, though we believe they are thoughtful, not intrusive, and we’ve earned the reader trust by not abusing our ability to advertise.

Email isn’t a reliable way to educate consumers

However, those placement ads you see from Google on webpages are a wholly different thing than Apple’s service and promotion advertising. Google ads are a result of surveillance capitalism — targeted ads using swaths of consumer data.

Apple’s ads are closer to billboards you’d see on a highway. Everyone can see them, and you can simply ignore them, and they’re gone once you pass by.

Google could realistically do the same thing with billboard-style ads on the web. In fact, that’s more or less how it used to work until they abused their position and started gathering incredible amounts of user data in the name of “showing more relevant ads.”

On iPhone, dismiss the notification, hit the “X” in Settings, tap into the feature, then exit, and those ads go away. They can sometimes return as a reminder some weeks or months later, but they are just as easily dismissed — which can’t be said of ads that abuse users from other companies.

And those users stating they paid for their iPhone and should get ads ever are also right. That’s why Apple does and should provide users with the ability to turn off promotional features at any time.

Apple advertises without relying on mountains of consumer data, and the things they share are actually useful to consumers of Apple technology. If you’re not going to see the F1 movie this weekend, swipe the notification away and move on with your life. It’s gone.

Meanwhile, I’ll happily take my $10 in savings and look for another opportunity to bundle or save thanks to a dismissible notification on my iPhone. We should reject surveillance capitalism, but billboards still have their place, even if they are sometimes inconvenient or annoying.

You clearly don’t have to like it. That’s fine, of course, to each their own. But to say that it’s some kind of epic betrayal, from an App that literally stores tickets

Apple’s new Ad: Apple Wallet F1 movie ad has sparked controversy after users received an unsolicited push notification promoting F1: The Movie via Apple Wallet, offering a $10 discount on ticket purchases .

The campaign, tied to Apple’s heavy backing of the Brad Pitt-starring film, drew swift backlash from iPhone owners who accused the Steve Jobs-era giant of treating their digital wallet like an advertising channel.

Critics compared the move to Apple’s infamous U2 album giveaway, citing privacy concerns and expressing frustration at receiving ads through a financial app. With users demanding better controls, Apple now faces pressure to rethink its approach to in-app marketing and respect user trust.

What is it all about?

A controversy over an ad on Apple Wallet App | Credit: Apple

With Brad Pitt’s Formula 1 film set to hit cinemas this week, Apple seemed to offer iPhone users a small incentive to watch the movie on the big screen. In theory, the move made sense. In practice, however, it sparked significant backlash from users.

Here’s what happened. On Tuesday afternoon, several iPhone users noticed a push notification from their Wallet app. The alert was a promotion, offering a $10 discount when purchasing two tickets to the film via Fandango (like BookMyShow).

The reason for the promotion? Apple is one of the film’s distributors. As such, the movie is expected to become available on Apple TV+ once its theatrical run concludes.

By distributing these alerts, Apple appears to be going against its own App Store policies. Push notifications should not be used for advertising unless users have expressly consented to receive them, according to the standards.

The guideline states that “unless customers have expressly consented to receive Push Notifications via consent language displayed in your app’s UI and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out of receiving such messages,” Push notifications should not be used for promotional or direct marketing reasons.

iPhone users aren’t happy

As was to be expected, Apple’s approach caused much criticism. Furthermore, the drama surrounding the incident is so great that it appears that the action backfired, even though we may be only hearing from a very vocal minority.

apple sending ads in push notifications pic.twitter.com/UpRUlPJYkT — kif (@kifleswing) June 24, 2025

who approved this? ads from my wallet app? Oh hell no. pic.twitter.com/dU9O4O1LCM — Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) June 24, 2025

For the latest and more interesting tech news, keep reading Indiatimes Tech.

Some users and designers are already panning Apple’s new user interface dubbed Liquid Glass, even though it’s a bit early. There are reasons to think it might improve — but also valid critiques.

While arguably the operating system design overhaul looks unfinished in many parts — notifications are too hard to read, and then there’s that monstrosity of the Control Center overlay — what Apple has shipped so far is the first developer beta, not a final release. There’s still time for many of the design systems’ current problems to be refined and corrected by the time Apple launches iOS 26 and its other OS updates to the public later this fall.

The dramatic refresh to the iPhone’s look and feel was announced at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference and described by Apple as its “broadest design update ever.” Liquid Glass, the company explained, would span across Apple’s platforms, unifying the experience of using Apple devices.

Image Credits:Apple

Inspired by Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset, Liquid Glass is so named because it leverages the optical quality of glass in its elements — it refracts light and features translucent materials. The update also modernizes the operating system’s interface in a way that seems obviously poised to later extend to other devices, like AR glasses.

However, there are parts of the interface where various elements are simply too hard to read — and not only for low-vision users (or the middle-aged). Even Apple’s press release includes a photo of the Apple Music user interface, where it’s difficult to make out the artist’s name in its light gray font on a translucent bar. That’s concerning because this is a photo Apple approved, which seemingly would indicate that this part of the OS update, at least, is finished.

Image Credits:Apple

Other users are sharing similar concerns about the legibility of reading through their notifications on the iPhone’s Lock Screen, where, depending on the colors of your background wallpaper, the text becomes either easier or harder to read as you scroll.

This issue can even be observed in the footage of Apple’s WWDC keynote address, where glassy notifications seem to require a bit of squinting to parse.

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As developers and other curious tech enthusiasts began testing the initial beta, they realized the problem with reading notifications was even worse when the iPhone’s wallpaper was brighter, with lighter colors. Here, the white text nearly fades away into the background in parts. Maybe Apple is helping us wean ourselves off our screen time addictions?

The iOS 26 Control Center is also almost unusable in the first developer beta, as there’s little background blur to hide the Home Screen’s icons and widgets behind the Center’s various controls, buttons, and sliders. Surely Apple designers don’t think this is the final product? Why didn’t they at least increase the background blur before shipping?

This is unfinished work that needs more than a slight adjustment.

yeah i cant defend this pic.twitter.com/MmFQ4hMjba — Holly – I like tech (@AnxiousHolly) June 10, 2025

There’s room to criticize other choices, too, like Home Screen animations that miss the mark — but these are likely unfinished. Or so we’d hope.

POV: You’re a tech founder with no experience in consumer and you hire the the first guy on Dribbble when searching “pop animation” pic.twitter.com/npYH8IqSjT — Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) June 10, 2025

Despite its initial flaws, there are signs that the updated design system will receive more attention to detail over time, even if that’s not as obvious in this first release due to its more glaring issues.

For starters, Apple’s icons look beautiful in their new glassy style (not designed by a marketing committee this time), and some of the effects involving morphing buttons are impressive. Moving Liquid Glass overlays over the Home Screen blurs and stretches icons in the background as if an actual piece of glass were being pulled over top.

These are some fantastic new icons. I love the new Camera app icon. pic.twitter.com/VbCxnzubc7 — Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) June 9, 2025

Can I please shake the hand of developers who made this happen?! 🤝

I salute you with respect 🫡pic.twitter.com/APBPl0ckzs — Oykun (@oykun) June 10, 2025

There are other subtle touches that make the design’s elements feel like glass, like the way the “Customize” button reflects the colors of the different wallpapers above it as you scroll through them while personalizing your Home Screen. The feature may still need to be refined, but it’s an example that demonstrates Liquid Glass was not some sort of rush job on Apple’s part.

I actually gasped when I saw this for the first time, they ain’t playin around https://t.co/5fcJVmem66 — Parker Ortolani (@ParkerOrtolani) June 10, 2025

Even Apple’s competitors have taken notice.

“Liquid Glass … I kinda love it?” posted Nothing CEO Carl Pei on X, who recently theorized that the future of smartphones will involve interacting with AI through the operating system itself, not necessarily through running apps.

Liquid Glass seems better positioned for such a world, where the interfaces of the apps become the focus as their icons fade away into the background — even, optionally, becoming clear glass.

Of course, there are concerns that Apple won’t be able to balance the iPhone’s battery usage that its new eye-candy demands — especially on older devices — but we won’t know if that’s true until the company ships a final version of iOS.

Apple, however, tried to appease users’ anxiety on this front by explaining during its WWDC keynote address that the advances it made in its hardware, silicon, and graphics technologies have paved the way for this type of user interface.

Plus, Apple already offers a way to toggle off some of its more power-hungry effects and motions to save on battery life, and that will likely be true for Liquid Glass as well.

It’s also worth remembering that Apple’s last major overhaul of its mobile operating system, iOS 7, was similarly unrefined upon its first release. The initial beta featured unreadable UI elements and thin lines and fonts that led to some criticism about usability and form over function. Over time, that design was improved, and now it’s thought of as just how the iPhone’s software looks — if it’s thought of at all.

The same will likely hold true for Liquid Glass … eventually.