“As Apple Inc.’s investment bank, Goldman Sachs GS Group Inc. has raised tens of billions of dollars for the technology company,” Peter Rudegeair and Liz Hoffman report for The Wall Street Journal. “Now, Goldman wants to bank Apple’s customers, too — with a ticket size of a few hundred dollars at a time.”
“The Wall Street firm is in talks to offer financing to shoppers buying phones, watches and other gadgets from Apple, people familiar with the matter said,” Rudegeair and Hoffman report. “Customers purchasing a $1,000 iPhone X could take out a loan from Goldman instead of charging it to credit cards that often carry high interest rates.”
“The partnership would be a coup for Goldman as it tries to grow its new consumer bank. Better known as an elite adviser to corporations and governments, Goldman is embracing retail banking and plain-vanilla lending in pursuit of growth as some traditional areas of strengths, namely trading, slump,” Rudegeair and Hoffman report. “In 2016 Goldman launched Marcus, an online lender that helps people refinance credit-card debt. The firm is now building a ‘point-of-sale’ financing business that will offer loans to shoppers at checkout, according to people familiar with the firm — effectively finding those customers one step earlier.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whatever helps minimize the sticker shock some see on a miracle pocket computer as powerful as a laptop starting at just $999 is a Good Thing™ for Apple, provided the interest rates aren’t predatory.