Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 287 posts

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#211

Post by BiteCode_dev »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #203
jwr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the consumer side, I tend to see Amex as not widely accepted. Especially drops when traveling. As a B2B SaaS owner, I don't accept Amex, because they make me jump through extra hoops. I process all cards through Braintree, but Amex requires an extra agreement directly with them, and they make the process of signing those agreements really difficult and obnoxious. I have better things to do with my time. I did a…

Imagine being outside the US and thinking "prove you're an incorporated business, prove the major players in your company exist, and fill out this tax form for foreigners" ...is "extra hoops" and "really difficult and obnoxious" > (BTW, I am not based in the US, so "W8 BEN" reads like Klingon to me). If only there were technology to look up what 'W8 BEN' means in seconds

From a french perspective, that seems like tuesday.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#212

Post by gizmo »

baq wrote: post #202
jwr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the consumer side, I tend to see Amex as not widely accepted. Especially drops when traveling. As a B2B SaaS owner, I don't accept Amex, because they make me jump through extra hoops. I process all cards through Braintree, but Amex requires an extra agreement directly with them, and they make the process of signing those agreements really difficult and obnoxious. I have better things to do with my time. I did a…

Piece of advice - read up on that W8-BEN.

W-8 BEN doesn't apply to him because it's for foreign individuals who receive non-business income. He needs a W-8 BEN-E most likely.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#213

Post by lolbase »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #192
zarzavat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amex’s business proposition to sellers is “we charge high fees but a lot of rich people have Amex so you (the seller) should suck it up and accept us anyway” Sure that works if you’re selling perfume or handbags, but if you’re a family restaurant then rich people and regular people eat the same quantity of food, your margins are low, why accept it? Moreover Amex is pretty rare outside of certain markets. If only fore…

One thing that never made sense to me is that im sure 99% of all the rich people who have amex also got at least another card. If you dont take amex wont those people just use another card.

Two things:

1) the backup is likely a high end rewards / corporate card whose fees are as high or higher than Amex for most categories of spend; and

2) it’s kind of weak for the last interaction with a business be them saying they won’t take your preferred form of payment because they imagine it boosts their margin by .3%.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#214

Post by adastra22 »

hagy wrote: post #197
symlinkk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t FDIC insured like Marcus (or other HYSA) are.

The default settlement account, Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund, has incredibly low credit risk because its assets are short-term US Federal gov debt and Federal Reserve repurchase agreements. [1] Neither of those entities have substantial default risk. Further, the global financial chaos of significant defaults from either of those entities would likely render FDIC insurance ineffective because too many banks wou…

Or Vanguard could collapse from the inside because some C-level officer was dipping into customer funds to cover some bad investment, and everyone takes a haircut on the holdings. On top of the drop in market value because most vanguard customers invest in vanguard funds, which suddenly become a toxic asset. Your "safe" money market asset is considered equal and paid out pro-rata, sharing the loss of those mutual funds.

Meanwhile the FDIC insured savings accounts at the bank next door are just fine in the midst of this total and complete market meltdown, and those account holders decide it's time to diversify and pick up some cheap stocks.

That's just one scenario. “Low risk” is not the same as no risk, and the difference isn't important until it suddenly is.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#215

Post by adastra22 »

amethyst wrote: post #178
paxys wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but Vanguard has "too big to fail" insurance.

Pretty sure that "insurance" only covers their money, not yours.

Vanguard is an investor-owned mutual company, so that's one and the same, no?

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#216

Post by KingOfCoders »

lmm wrote: post #206
KennyBlanken wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being outside the US and thinking "prove you're an incorporated business, prove the major players in your company exist, and fill out this tax form for foreigners" ...is "extra hoops" and "really difficult and obnoxious" > (BTW, I am not based in the US, so "W8 BEN" reads like Klingon to me). If only there were technology to look up what 'W8 BEN' means in seconds

> Imagine being outside the US and thinking "prove you're an incorporated business, prove the major players in your company exist, and fill out this tax form for foreigners" > ...is "extra hoops" and "really difficult and obnoxious" Compare with how willing US citizens or businesses are to comply with similarly basic things when another country asks for them.

Selling on Amazon in dozens of countries requires only one from, that from the US. No other country.

Even if I don't sell in the US. Even if I never go to the US. Even if I have no company in the US.

Imagine everyone in the US selling on Amazon needing to sign a German form, and a French form, and a UK form, and a Spanish form etc. with no intention to sell in these countries.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#217

Post by traceroute66 »

xyst wrote: post #116
giobox wrote: post #8

Seemingly both sides have wanted out of this deal, earlier in the year there was another WSJ report with Goldman wanting to end it as well: > https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-is-looking-for-a-way-ou... The earlier story from June suggested Amex might take it over.

That would be cool. Amex support way better than GS that’s for sure. Would suck for retailers though. Amex fees among the highest when compared to other networks and issuing banks. On the consumer side, I tend to see Amex as not widely accepted. Especially drops when traveling.

> Amex as not widely accepted. Especially drops when traveling.

Only nutters use Amex whilst travelling (or at least non-US nutters)

The double-conversion gotcha is a real killer.

Everything gets converted back via USD.

So for example, if you have a EUR Amex card and you go to the UK, the AMEX flow is: GBP -> USD -> EUR.

And they take, IIRC 3% from you on each leg of that double-conversion.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#218

Post by mvc »

initplus wrote: post #150
paxys wrote: post #95

This is probably a death knell for Goldman's entire consumer banking division. Ever single one of their products (including the Marcus savings account, which is now the sole remaining one) has been a costly failure.

What is the underlying reason these consumer offerings have been such a failure? Something like a savings account should be the closest thing to free money there is - stick the cash into t bills, collect a margin on top and pass the rest back to the customer. Do the marketing/cs costs really outweigh the margin? Or is it some issue with how the assets backing the account are invested?

Goldman is known for servicing ultra-wealthy and business clients. Consumer finance seems like a completely different beast to me.

Tighter margins. Lots of low-paid call center staff and low-paid managers to crack the whip. Folks at Goldman would rather be on the golf course doing shady deals with Trump and Musk.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#219

Post by borski »

petemir wrote: post #74
kzrdude wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Card fees are capped in EU, and I wonder if amex has any way of going around that. (0.2% debit, 0.3% credit) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

Yes, they go around that because they are considered a “three-party scheme” https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/48519/why-are-a... High fees are what Apple uses to offer such “great benefits” with their existing card. If they want to expand to Europe, the only cards enabling that would be Amex, or Diners (which is even less accepted I think).

Diners is accepted everywhere Discover is. It's smaller than AmEx, probably, but it's all over Korea, for example.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#220

Post by geden »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #203
jwr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the consumer side, I tend to see Amex as not widely accepted. Especially drops when traveling. As a B2B SaaS owner, I don't accept Amex, because they make me jump through extra hoops. I process all cards through Braintree, but Amex requires an extra agreement directly with them, and they make the process of signing those agreements really difficult and obnoxious. I have better things to do with my time. I did a…

Imagine being outside the US and thinking "prove you're an incorporated business, prove the major players in your company exist, and fill out this tax form for foreigners" ...is "extra hoops" and "really difficult and obnoxious" > (BTW, I am not based in the US, so "W8 BEN" reads like Klingon to me). If only there were technology to look up what 'W8 BEN' means in seconds

W-8BEN form is the most obnoxious form I've ever seen. It's written in incredibly opaque and obtuse language and covers far too many scenarios.

And the most incredibly annoying thing about it is that for most UK companies (dont' forget if you are a limited company you need the W-8BEN-E variant!) you probably only have to fill in about 5 short fields. So it only really needs to be half a page. However working out which fields is virtually impossible and I'm still not entirely sure I fill it out correctly.

Post reply on HN