Comment by delfinom
2 days ago
Wonder what Apple caved on. They famously only found goldman to work with them originally because they had significant demands that bucked the industry, including setting everyone's statement dates to the exact same so that customer support collapses the same day every year.
Settling on the same day is quite a choice. PDF creation cluster scaling alone must have been something else, let alone the obvious problems they had knocking over CS and getting fined by the CFPB.
I doubt that PDF generation makes any dent given all the other things they have to process at statement closing. They also don’t mail out statements by default and I don’t think everyone looks at the PDFs on the first day, so they can do it just in time.
This guy manages 35ms per pdf https://www.ersteiger.com/posts/rendering-one-million-pdfs/#...
> so that customer support collapses the same day every year.
Every _month_. And it's not just the customer service desk that's a problem. With even distribution of billing and a large customer base, outflows match inflows and you don't have to do much to manage it. With all money coming in on one day you have a huge outflow of money and then it all rushes back in.
Much easier to borrow 1 dollar for a year than 30 dollars for a month.
They also kept transaction data more private than other cards. Hopefully they’ve kept that
I would guess putting a cap of 660 credit score and adding some fees back like late fee, over limit fee, and return payment fee. I don't see JPM doing a card with rewards/cash back in the sub prime market, slate doesn't have any rewards.
Apple card with GS was amazing deal for people who didn't have prime credit.
Some of the perks were great even for prime if you're already bought into the Apple ecosystem. 3% cash back plus 0% APR installment on Apple product purchases is a nice double dip that most cards can't touch unless you're really trying hard.
If you don't want to mess with points, its a great card. You still need another card for travel since it doesn't have rental car insurance, travel insurance, etc. Its missing all the features that normally come with Visa Infinite or Mastercard World Elite cards.
Searching online, another difference is no late fees for missed payments, only interest, while Chase's late fee is $40. Will that change?
Does it have to be Apple that caved?
Banks were not queuing up to do it the first time and it didn't work out well for the bank that did (Goldman). Who else is compromising
I have no insider knowledge here but it doesn't seem outlandish to think that the negotiations would go a little differently for an established product vs a brand new one. Goldman may have simply been the only bank willing to work with Apple when the customer base (in size, demographics, spending patterns, whatever) was hypothetical.
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I would imagine Goldman want out. They were never a retail banking firm to begin with. And sell the current Apple Card division with debt and customer base packaged at a discount.
Consider the transition takes 24 months I wouldn't be surprised if the discount allow them to run three years with clause to terminate at later date. The downside and exposure should be limited with great upside on worldwide launch.
But judging from Apple's speed with their execution in Apple Wallet this will likely take a lot longer than expected.
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Not sure which way this tips the scales, but Chase has a retail banking presence in the UK, GS doesn't. If Apple wants to expand Apple Card internationally, and want to keep the number of partners to a minimum, Chase would be a better fit. Inversely, Chase's market in the UK is still small, and an Apple Card partnership would be a big draw to pull customers in.
(UK reader here too).
You could well be right, though I have a couple of theories why they Apple haven't rolled it out here:
- maybe they think it'll just be too messy, having to market different cashback reward rates and so on for the US and UK, due to the capped interchange fees - too much "it's not fair" style moaning like everyone did about Black Friday, even though we don't even celebrate Thanksgiving here.
- Apple have somewhat de-prioritised UK/Europe generally given their dealings with the EU
- (as others have hinted) most banks simply aren't interested
From the outside it does seem as though there was basically nothing in it for Goldman Sachs, other than perhaps useful spending data (they must surely have got some data, regardless of Apple's privacy claims) and a bit of industry prestige for being the ones to work with Apple?
Absolutely. I'd imagine not being able to use the card at Costco alone would be enough to have them entertaining surprising concessions. It was the first thing I thought of, with Chase CC's being Visa instead of Mastercard.
Chase issues cards on both the Visa and Mastercard network (i.e. certain cobrands and the Freedom Flex), so I doubt this was a serious consideration.
Why would a bank chose to lose billions of dollars?