Method and apparatus for card activation are provided, which belong to computer technology. The method is applied to an intelligent device having a secure element (SE) chip and includes: creating a first background thread during pre-activation operations using a user interface (UI) thread; obtaining a first part of data for the card activation from a server using the first background thread; writing the first part of data to the SE chip using the first background thread; creating a second background thread after the pre-activation operations have been accomplished using the UI thread and the card activation is confirmed; and writing a second part of data for the card activation to the SE chip using the second background thread.