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Apple announces Apple Card credit card

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Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#491
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goldman is a client of Apple's. It's possible that they do some shady shit, but it's also possible that they don't want to fuck up their relationship with the world's most valuable company or jeopardize their entry into the consumer space. Their profit motive might save them. Or it could be a disaster, who knows. My guess is that Goldman would trade on the aggregate data

Nit: world's most valuable publicly traded* company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco

Non–state-owned enterprise, more like.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#492
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great, now I feel much better.

Goldman is a client of Apple's. It's possible that they do some shady shit, but it's also possible that they don't want to fuck up their relationship with the world's most valuable company or jeopardize their entry into the consumer space. Their profit motive might save them. Or it could be a disaster, who knows. My guess is that Goldman would trade on the aggregate data

Wasn't there a lawsuit that an investment bank (can't recall if it was Goldman Sachs or not) can deceive its clients and not disclose that it has a competing or directly contrary interest?

And then there's this, and a dozen other stories about Goldman Sachs deceiving its clients in the past.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/goldman-sachss-long-...

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#493
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucky you! I am from the Netherlands, but not presently living there. Maybe I should sign up with my Dutch credit card and put my parents address. Thanks for the tip!

Amazon Prime Video is a worldwide service: https://www.primevideo.com Content varies by region, though, of course. And naturally nowhere do they tell you need to use primevideo.com instead of amazon.com as an international customer.

Thanks for the heads up. I signed up for the 7 day free trial. There are some good shows. I guess I'll keep it for a few months so i can binge watch those shows.

Very little sci-fi shows though.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#494

I am going to state my unpopular opinion once again on HN, but so be it: SCREW GOLDMAN SACHS. So - with that said, without getting mad at me, look at the long history of shenanigans that GS is responsible. Lets start first with the Wolf of Wall Street (the movie) -- if you're not familiar, GS helped the PM of Malaysia rob the country of ~4 billion in profits, from which one of the Playboy-money-guys from Malaysia, st…

Goldman is a huge organization, the parts that deal with consumers aren't the parts cutting huge financing deals. Marcus--their online savings bank--is very consumer friendly and pays more interest than almost anyone else (2.25%, certainly more than anyone else with a big name). I'd imagine this offering will be much more like Marcus and have nothing to do with its investment bank activities, but I guess we'll find o…

Marcus is solid. Moved money over there myself. There isn't much to it, no bells and whistles but it's straight interest at a reasonable rate (compared to the others) which many people are looking for. They have CD options as well. Also note this one is FDIC insured and is a true savings account unlike others which often are SIPC insured money market funds. Bonus the site is really nice because it's not a jumbled mess like most bank sites. It's super simple and shows me all I need to know $ and %.

I personally haven't dealt with their support team so I can't speak on how reliable that is compared to the other big banks.

Agreed with jonknee. Don't dismiss it because of the Goldman Sachs name (if anything, I feel more comfortable having a name like this handling financial matters).

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#495

I wonder how this is reconciled. "Apple also says that it’ll use machine learning and Apple Maps to label stores that you use in the app, and use that data to track purchases across categories like “food and drink” or “shopping.”" "Like many of Apple’s products, privacy is a big push here. “Apple doesn’t know what you bought, where you bought it, and how much you paid for it,” said Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay. A…

Most of that will be done on device. Data that needs to be synced up across devices will do so on users iCloud account (to which supposedly Apple has no access to).

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#496
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2% cash back on Apple Pay, 3% cash back on Apple products, and 1% cash back on non-Apple Pay, non-Apple products. Do you know a better card that always gives 2% cash back, no cap?

Fidelity Visa is 2% on everything, no cap, no annual fee. Citi DoubleCash is 2% on everything, dunno if there's a cap, no annual fee. (you have to redeem into a bank account, not as statement credit, to get the full 2%) USAA Limitless is 2.5% cash back on everything, no cap. (military only, no longer available), no annual fee. If you have enough cash invested with Merrill Edge ($100,000, including IRAs) the Bank of A…

> Discover IT Miles earns 3% cash back on everything the first year, churnable (you can get a new one every year), no cap, no annual fee.

I had to look this up - seemed way to good to be true - based on this site [1], it's "Discover: 1.5 Miles per $1 spent on all purchases."

All your other references check out - the Alliant seems very interesting. Fidelity requires a Fidelity bank account - too much effort.

However, I am guessing Apple made a lot of hay with the "no late fees" - and really identified their target market (ie, not necessarily you & me).

[1] https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/compare/?srcCode=GAX5&...

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#497
post #496
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fidelity Visa is 2% on everything, no cap, no annual fee. Citi DoubleCash is 2% on everything, dunno if there's a cap, no annual fee. (you have to redeem into a bank account, not as statement credit, to get the full 2%) USAA Limitless is 2.5% cash back on everything, no cap. (military only, no longer available), no annual fee. If you have enough cash invested with Merrill Edge ($100,000, including IRAs) the Bank of A…

> Discover IT Miles earns 3% cash back on everything the first year, churnable (you can get a new one every year), no cap, no annual fee. I had to look this up - seemed way to good to be true - based on this site [1], it's "Discover: 1.5 Miles per $1 spent on all purchases." All your other references check out - the Alliant seems very interesting. Fidelity requires a Fidelity bank account - too much effort. However,…

"Discover: 1.5 Miles per $1 spent on all purchases." - Yes, but you missed something, they do a cashback match the first year, making it 3% for the first year.

https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/resources/earn-more-re...

>With Cashback Match, Discover automatically matches all the cash back new cardmembers have earned at the end of their first year on their credit card.1 Discover will apply the match after the first 12 consecutive billing cycles, within the following one or two billing cycles.

At the end of the first year you can apply for a new one and get cashback match again for another year. You can hold two Discover cards at once, so the third year you'd have to close the first card, before applying for a third and at the fourth year close the second, and so-forth (people talk about actually doing this, not worth the hassle for me, and I got the USAA Limitless 2.5% card)

As for a Fidelity account - a Cash Management account has no fees and no minimums and is a useful account to have (offers ATM reimbursements)

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage fee is 1, for rewards necessary to get people to use the card and 2, to cover fraud which is actually a MASSIVE problem and 3, to cover defaults/payment issues. The per-transaction fee existed to cover the additional cost of building out the network (literally running cables and wires to the merchants' stores) and providing card readers. The network is already built and has been paid for THOUSANDS of t…

Mastercard/Visa aren't paying the rewards (that's on the issuing bank), they're not doing much fraud protection (again, largely the issuing bank), and they're not responsible for any of the defaults or payment issues (you guessed it, the issuing bank). The issuing bank sets interest rates (and late/missed payment fees, and penalty rates, etc.) to cover at least the defaults and payment issues part.

Right, but the issuing bank splits the percentage fee with the payment processor. Again, this brings up the point -- with the issuing bank taking care of all that, what is the payment processor doing that realistically costs the other 50% of that percentage fee?

If you look at Visa's margins -- it's pretty clear the answer is: not much.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#499
post #312

I want to know what sort of extended warranty insurance they will provide. There was no mention of this in the presentation today. They mentioned giving 3% cash back on anything bought from Apple. Right now American Express is giving me 3% back on all computer purchases and extending AppleCare by 2 additional years. I made the most recent purchase with that card via Apple Pay. So if I went out and bought a new MacBoo…

On a similar note, getting 5% Cash Back each month on my modest AWS bills is certainly a nice perk with my Amex Amazon card, in addition to the 5% cashback on amazon & whole foods purchases.

Re: Apple announces Apple Card credit card

#500

I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. How long before the opaque governance of the App Store is applied to their payments offering? How long before activists start making this a new vector for deplatforming? Apple also announced a news offering ( https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-news-plus ) and I think the same concerns apply there.

Look no further than the recent issue where Patreon competitor Subscribestar had payment processors Stripe and PayPal stop processing their payments for _political_ disagreements with the purported beneficiaries of the donations through the platform. PayPal said that it was actually one of the underlying payment processors, and it was suspected to be MasterCard. That incident was the first time I've ever taken the ne…

*Patreon said ?
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