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Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

wsj.com

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Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#31

Post by tmpz22 »

not-my-account wrote: post #2

Hm, what would this mean for Apple Card users? Would it be shut down? How about those who have Apple Savings Accounts?[0] [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/04/apple-cards-new-high-...

I had the Uber credit card which at launch had something like 4% cashback at restaurants/bars/uber trips.

Uber progressively slashed the benefits overtime to the point where it just had some generic 1% cashback. That was through Barclays and eventually they shipped me some vanilla master card with no benefits.

I hope the Apple card doesn't follow a similar path.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#32

Post by 3-cheese-sundae »

herpdyderp wrote: post #25
malwarebytess wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more interested in the savings account integration. I've found it super convenient. Too low APR for long term savings, but the convenience is worth the difference to me for short term savings parking. I keep $30K or so in it revolving for moving money around. Not to mention the cashback deposit right to the account.

> Too low APR for long term savings What APR is your baseline for long term savings? I'm interested in where you see significantly higher APR savings accounts because the Apple Card Savings Account is 400x my previous savings account APR.

As of this writing, Ally is still higher than Apple Savings account (4.25% APY vs 4.15% APY)

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#33

Post by notatoad »

petemir wrote: post #24
giobox wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a bit of a detractor for me, Amex is not as widely accepted, especially when traveling in Europe. Mastercard is accepted virtually everywhere in the EU and UK.

I hate that it works this way, but perhaps an Apple-Amex deal is what is needed for businesses to start accepting Amex. Edit: typo

lower fees is what is needed for businesses to start accepting amex.

visa and mastercard are 2-3%, amex is 5-6%. there's no upside for merchants to accept transactions where they have to pay double the processing fees

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#34

Post by dimmke »

balderdash wrote: post #7

I’m curious why Apple is moving to terminate as opposed to getting GS to buy them out of their contract?

My theory about the Apple Card:

Goldman Sachs is not setup to be a direct consumer bank. This caused a lot of problems:

* The ease of sign up / approval led to a lot of subprime approvals that might not have gone through with a more established lender. Not only did this cause GS to lose money on delinquent accounts, it prevented the Apple Card from ever becoming a status symbol.

* Goldman Sachs developed a reputation for almost never backing up cardholders in the case of dicey/fraudulent charges.The sense of security is a huge part of why people use a credit card for purchases. I myself terminated my Apple Card account over this.

* The card itself was just not competitive in terms of rewards. The UI/UX of the app and the deeper integration into the Apple ecosystem was nice... (if a bit confusing) but when I moved over to Chase I found myself not really missing it at all.

* Edit: Forgot one additional thing. Apple Card did not have contactless (tap) technology because they wanted to promote using Apple Pay. But whipping out your phone sucks compared to just tapping your card against a reader.

All I wanted was a simple, easy credit card. I didn't care about minmaxing bonuses etc... but when I moved over to Chase I realized I had been leaving a lot of money on the table.

All the other players but especially Chase and AMEX have very established reward systems setup.

It's possible that Apple wants to move banks specifically because they want to reposition the card and need a different partner to do it with.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#35

Post by [deleted] »

flwjliwjle wrote: post #28

Good. They should shut down the whole Apple Card program. It was awful. I had an Apple card for two months. In those two months, I had more inexplicably declined transactions than in the other twenty years with other cards combined. Every single time I called support and Goldman Sachs pointed at Apple and Apple pointed at Goldman Sachs and the problem never got resolved. They both did an astonishingly bad job.

[deleted]

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#36

Post by lxgr »

petemir wrote: post #24
giobox wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a bit of a detractor for me, Amex is not as widely accepted, especially when traveling in Europe. Mastercard is accepted virtually everywhere in the EU and UK.

I hate that it works this way, but perhaps an Apple-Amex deal is what is needed for businesses to start accepting Amex. Edit: typo

What would that change?

Amex acceptance in the US is basically ubiquitous, and how would a new type of Amex change things abroad?

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#37

Post by tristanb »

flwjliwjle wrote: post #30
Ajay-p wrote: post #27

I only got the card because I wanted a neat piece of titanium. I used it a few times and then cancelled it. Was I the only one?

I tried to use it a few times and then cancelled it. It got declined a lot and no explanation was ever given.

I've had it since it launched. I make thousands of transactions a month. I've never had a decline.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#38

Post by function_seven »

herpdyderp wrote: post #25
malwarebytess wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more interested in the savings account integration. I've found it super convenient. Too low APR for long term savings, but the convenience is worth the difference to me for short term savings parking. I keep $30K or so in it revolving for moving money around. Not to mention the cashback deposit right to the account.

> Too low APR for long term savings What APR is your baseline for long term savings? I'm interested in where you see significantly higher APR savings accounts because the Apple Card Savings Account is 400x my previous savings account APR.

It's way better than my previous savings account as well, but still about 0.5-0.75 points lower than a couple of CDs that I have.

Not sure if that counts as significant or not, but I figure it adds up.

Apple Savings: 4.15%

CIT Bank 6-Mo CD: 4.88%

CIT Bank 18-Mo CD: 4.5% I think?

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#39

Post by hedgehog »

arcdigital wrote: post #4
not-my-account wrote: post #2

Hm, what would this mean for Apple Card users? Would it be shut down? How about those who have Apple Savings Accounts?[0] [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/04/apple-cards-new-high-...

I'm assuming it will be just like any other time a card portfolio is sold or transferred (Costco Card: Amex -> Citi, REI Card: US Bank -> Capital One, GM Card: Capital One -> Marcus (which is Goldman, ironically I think they want to get rid of this card too), etc...). Unless Apple discontinues the card completely, they will choose a new bank, that bank will take on the existing portfolio, everyone will get new cards…

I imagine they'll replace the physical cards as the existing ones have Goldman's name on the back. The transition could otherwise be nearly invisible, the Goldman name and actual card numbers don't show up often in normal usage.

Re: Apple pulls plug on Goldman credit-card partnership

#40

Post by mikequinlan »

cpncrunch wrote: post #10

This article is paywalled, with no way to bypass. Non-paywalled summary here: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/28/23980261/apple-is-report... Can I assume everyone commenting here has a WSJ subscription?

>Can I assume everyone commenting here has a WSJ subscription?

I was able to read it fine with the current version of the Bypass Paywalls chrome extension.

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

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