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Apple is jumping into the credit card business with Goldman Sachs.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple and Goldman Sachs are joining up to launch a new credit card that will be heavily integrated with the iPhone.
Using Apple Wallet, cardholders will be able to set spending goals, track rewards on purchases, and manage their account balances. Customers will also reportedly earn 2 percent cash back on most of their purchases with potentially higher bonuses on Apple’s products and services.
Apple employees will be the first to test out the card when its issued in a few weeks, according to the report. The joint credit card with Goldman Sachs will use Mastercard’s payment network.
The credit card move is a big step for both companies.
Apple has been working on moving its sales focus from its hardware to its service-based products. Last year, the iPhone maker announcedit would no longer report how many product units it sold in its quarterly earnings updates. Apple made the case that sales of these devices no longer painted an accurate picture of how the company is doing. Being that so many consumers already own Apple’s smartphones and tablets, the tech behemoth argued that number of paid subscriptions to its services is much more accurate portrayal of the company’s success.
With its own credit card, Apple is hoping to double-dip on the fees it already collects from the cut it takes on its app and multimedia sales. The company also takes a cut from credit card transactions made through Apple Pay, so Apple is already quite familiar with how much revenue it can generate from credit card.
SEE ALSO:New Apple rumor is every fan's dream come trueFor Goldman Sachs, this would actually be the global investment banking giant’s very first credit card. Goldman Sachs is fairly new to consumer-facing banking. The company launched Marcus, its online consumer bank service in 2016.
Currently, Apple partners with Barclay’s to issue a Barclaycard Visa with Apple Rewards. The company heavily promotes the card on its Apple Store as the preferred method to help finance your Apple purchases. It’s currently unknown if or how the Goldman Sachs partnership will affect the Barclaycard.
An Apple branded credit card makes sense for a company trying to promote its Apple Pay service as well as grow it fee-based revenue. However, its decision to partner with Goldmach Sachs on a consumer-facing product is an interesting one. The investment bank has become synonymous with the 2008 financial crisis for the role it played in misleading investors. The bank has also been criticized for the billions of dollars in bailout money it received. Goldman Sachs has been pushing its Marcus consumer banking product as part of a rebrand.
Both Apple and Goldman Sachs are banking on this credit card being a success. Time will tell if the card pays off.
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