Changes, with some measure of accompanying fanfare, may be coming for Apple Card users as the company seeks to end its relationship with its banking partner Goldman Sachs Group.
Elizabeth O’Brien for Barron’s:
Nothing is likely to happen right away, though. The tech company recently proposed to Goldman an exit from the contract in 12 to 15 months, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
“These things take a long time to work through, especially when you have big brands, big companies and a whole lot of money involved,” said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst with LendingTree.
Apple will likely find a new lender to acquire the portfolio of existing credit-card debt and continue providing the card under similar terms, experts say. In particular, the company will likely seek to retain its popular 3-2-1 rewards structure with any new issuer, said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com.
Cardholders receive 3% cash back on any purchase made at Apple and select retailers using Apple Card with Apple Pay, 2% every time they use Apple Card with Apple Pay, and 1% on purchases where Apple Pay isn’t accepted…
The switch won’t likely sneak up on consumers, Schulz said, because any new deal will probably generate “a decent amount of fanfare.”
MacDailyNews Take: Save those physical Apple Cards emblazoned with the Goldman Sachs logo on the back as they’ll become collector’s items.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Only grossly incompetent jokes that are Goldman Sachs could screw up and lose money in the credit card business.
If Apple decides to become their own bank and enter the financial services world, woe are all the other companies in that market.
Apple is always planning ahead, I don’t think this caught them off guard. It’s very plausible that Apple used Chase to get visibility and experience and will now use this opportunity to turn Apple Card into something more like American Express and Discover.
Both Amex and Discover are payment networks and card issuers. This is more of a closed-loop system where they control the process and experience and get higher returns because of it…and this is more similar to how Apple runs things.
Visa and Mastercard are only payment networks, not card issuers…the big banks like Chase, Citi, and Wells Fargo are the ones that actually handle the latter.
To the consumer, the difference is negligible, but behind the scenes…it’s significant.
If Apple can pull this off…wow that would be huge!
For a totally electronic c-card, the user experience sucks. I can only pull transactions at the end of the month. I can’t keep track of activity on a daily basis with tools like Quicken.. Why can’t I login and actually do something on the website? And applying the daily cash isn’t as simple as claimed to be. come on guys, the end user expectations are off by a mile with GS backend. Give me something like standard c-card companies do. Its all electronic – the incremental cost of making it work for the end user is insignificant. The whole thing is so messed up, that I don’t use the card except for apple stuff. Just sayin’ folks.