I used to have a Chase card, but decided I didn’t like dealing with them, so I closed the account.
And then they bought my bank, and I had a Chase account again. I gave them a chance and they were still awful, so I switched banks.
A couple years after that, they bought my bank, and I had a Chase account again. This isn’t a duplicate paragraph, it happened again. I gave them a chance again, and they were still awful, so I switched banks again (to a credit union, which, fingers crossed).
Now I guess I get to do business with Chase again, which is neat. I’m happy to be part of an economy where I can vote with my dollar like this.
Far be it from me to get in the way of someone protesting megabank centralization, but...
I have to imagine that this bank relationship will be different from those previous acquisitions? I never interacted with Goldman Sachs for the duration I've had my Apple Card—the relationship is entirely with Apple and their iOS app. I don't imagine that to be much different when Chase is the issuer.
I have a couple store brand cards backed by Chase (like the Amazon one) and they are basically exactly like any other first party Chase card. They show up on the Chase dashboard. You call Chase customer service for issues. Payments happen through Chase. The card benefits are all provided by Chase. The only difference is that there's Amazon printed in front and the points the card earns aren't regular Chase points. Of course their relationship with Apple could be different, but I doubt it'll be anything like the Goldman one. Remember that Goldman didn't have a consumer business at all before they got into the partnership.
"Of course their relationship with Apple could be different, but I doubt it'll be anything like the Goldman one" I can nearly guarantee this is completely wrong. It will be just like Goldman. That's literally the point of getting the card, is do everything through Apple and Goldman is just the backbone and support (through Apple's UI). Apple's contract with Goldman was until 2030, they wouldn't let Goldman out of it unless they were able to find a new partner with same or better experience and terms. They could have choose Synchrony, etc if Chase didn't agree. And clearly Chase was willing to concede to Apple since they don't even offer high yield savings, but agreed to for Apple since thats part of their existing offerings. Right now Apple decides the Promos for Apple Card, and at most maybe Chase will have a little more involvement in those but probably not. So in realty the only real world change is probably better customer support than Sachs, and Chase may not offer higher risks customers credit or as much like Goldman did and finally they may not offer the very low APR's that Apple card is known for, for it's best customers.
AFAIK in the current setup, only the UI is Apple's; any time you message customer service or open a dispute, that is handled directly by
Goldman employees, and decisions to raise/lower your credit limit are also made by Goldman. All of those parts will be handled by Chase now.
Have to disagree there. While the iOS wallet apple is all apple and thats what you will use for checking your statements and making payments which is great. But anytime I have to actually interact with for support that is 100% with Goldman. When you do you support through the iMessage chat feature it's all Goldman on the other end, not Apple at all. And I've had to deal with them far too many times, and each time was absolutely terrible. Because of Goldman but also because of the platform Apple gives them for support, since you send a message have to wait for a text response. So feels like a chat but unlike a chat responses can take a while more like email, but then if they respond and you dont respond very fast then it closes it out and your response triggers a how can we help and you start all over, which is unlike email. So it's the worst of Chat and the worst of Email. Hopefully that is revamped with the new relationship. And if you have to call you get Sachs not Apple. Chase isn't great but expect much better than Sachs.
My problem with Chase and PNC is that their "fraud detection" seems to be random die rolls or monkeys throwing darts at my picture on a wall. I love the 5 minutes of anxiety after each and every purchase where I wonder if it will just randomly fail.
Maybe I’m a passive user, but my credit cards are autopay set it and forget it. As someone with no opinion on cc companies, curious what gave you such a bad impression.
I’ve had the good fortune of working with actually good banks with actually good customer service, and Chase always sticks out for how indifferent they are. If you don’t need anything beyond the app, sure, they’re probably fine - although I seem to remember them shoving ads in my transaction feed - but I’ve never had luck getting ahold of a human with any variety of autonomy or agency when I needed one.
they have very strict AML controls as well. For example if you regularly withdraw a few thousand in cash to pay contractors for a house project they may close your account.
Their problem is with false positives they find, not true positives you find. My application for a credit card was somehow flagged as fraudulent. Chase repeatedly asked for additional forms of ID, then told me the scans I sent were illegible. (The scans were fine; I think they just needed an excuse.) I went to a branch with the physical documents, and they said they couldn't look at them. The branch put me in an office and called the same telephone support, with the same result. I eventually gave up.
I guess I'm lucky they rejected me before any money changed hands. I've heard horror stories from people with significant assets at their bank, locked out until an actual lawsuit (the letter from a lawyer didn't work) finally got their attention. I think it's like Google support, usually fine but catastrophic when it's not.
> The branch put me in an office and called the same telephone support, with the same result.
As far as I can tell, going to a branch of a big bank to address a problem nowadays is similar to going to a cellphone store for tech support. All they can really do is call the same hotline or fill out the same webform you’d have access to at home.
Anecdotal but just came back from 2 weeks abroad and didn’t have to take any action to continue using my chase card. Also I believe the conversion rate was better than the local.
Yup, that was one of them. Chase botched transferring the bill pay over after spending 3 months saying they’d transfer bill pay and then told me over the phone they hadn’t said that while I was looking at the current page on their website that said they’d transfer bill pay.
First Republic was great - they were the reason I didn’t go to a credit union sooner. Schwab also has amazing customer service, if you’re still searching for a new home and aren’t willing to make the leap to a CU.
Just want to point out that people have said it’s been very very hard to get Goldman Sachs to dispute a transaction, so I’m hoping that Chase will offer better service than Goldman as Goldman’s actual service is supposedly not very good.
>Now I guess I get to do business with Chase again, which is neat. I’m happy to be part of an economy where I can vote with my dollar like this.
You were unusually unlucky. The US has a very decentralized banking system, with thousands of institutions. The Big Four (JPM, BAC, C, WFC) have under 50% of total deposits; the comparable figure for Canada's Big Five is ~85%,
Goldman Sachs was new to consumer banking and it has long been apparent that Apple outplayed them with the Apple Card deal, causing them to lose a lot of money, and so they have been wanting to get out of it: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/10/16/goldman-sachs-reg...
This is impressive because whenever I hear Goldman Sachs, this line by Matt Taibbi comes to mind:
The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
I don’t really get why it’s a bad deal for GS or how “Apple outplayed them” based on that article. Just seems like a frayed partnership cause they didn’t hit their numbers.
Does that mean that this new partnership will be better because Chase is better at consumer banking than Goldman Sachs, or Chase negotiated a deal that will not cause them to lose a lot of money?
If it's the latter, does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
> If it's the latter, does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
Can it really get worse? All they do is a 2% cash back if you use Apple Pay, and 1% if you use the physical card. Ok if you buy directly from Apple it’s 3% back but that’s hardly “good” - you get a couple of bucks for buying an AirPod.
> Does that mean that this new partnership will be better because Chase is better at consumer banking than Goldman Sachs, or Chase negotiated a deal that will not cause them to lose a lot of money?
The partnership between Apple and Chase is not new, even though this particular credit card product offering is. There is another quite popular form of payment Apple has supported for years which necessitated this partnership to be established.
> does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
the card rewards for AC were pretty awful in the first place. It's only useful as a store card that offers 0% financing.
the deal is probably more in favor of chase when it comes to the fee schedule and various issuing bank and interchange fees (ie, the ~2-3% that card networks charge to merchants)
The savings accounts are through GS as well. The transition page basically says “nothing to announce yet”, in a way that implies they may move somewhere as well.
It was really the only reason I considered getting one. I suspect this will be relevant to more people than you might expect- iirc it's the only titanium (metal?) credit card you can get without an annual fee.
Part of this is J.P. Morgan Chase paying for customer base. JPMC can't legally buy any banks anymore unless it's at an fdic auction for a failed bank. That means that the only way to bring in new customers is organic growth and taking over company/store cards from other banks. If JPMC sees an ROI on this, I expect that they will start aggressively going after established store card like the old navy/gap card or airline cards like the American Airlines card. They instantly get thousands of new customers to market their other services to, can offer cross promotion into their most valuable fee cards (sapphire reserve) for less cost, and get to expand their market information gathering operation that feeds into their investment banking and commercial banking lines of business to inform better understanding of the market.
For the purposes of this post, American Express is not germane and thus omitted.
To fully understand this press release, we have to start with "the five circles" diagram which shows the simplest form of the entities involved in credit card processing:
/-----------------\
| Payment Network |
\-----------------/
/ \
/--------\ /-----------\
| Issuer | | Processor |
\--------/ \-----------/
| |
/-------------\ /----------\
| Card Holder | | Merchant |
\-------------/ \----------/
An example of a Payment Network is Visa.
Issuer and Processor are banks allowed to connect to the
Payment Network directly.
Card Holder is a person who has a credit card account
provided by an Issuer.
Merchant is a company which performs credit card
transactions via their Processor.
Now, companies which are neither a bank nor sponsored by a bank cannot directly interact with a Payment Network. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, none of them. Those companies must use a Processor (more on this later).
Which is why Chase (or bank equivalent) must be the "new issuer of Apple Card", since only an Issuer can do so (as illustrated above).
An important concept to revisit is that only banks or companies sponsored by banks can connect to a Payment Network. Companies sponsored by banks in order to enable them to directly communicate on a Payment Network are typically other banks and often have to give up an ownership stake to their sponsor.
Which means there must exist another element in the "five circles" diagram to explain offerings such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, etc.:
Here, "ISO" are the payment services such as the aforementioned Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, and friends. Ultimately, though, it is a bank which is the Processor which powers them. And in the Processor space, Chase is the 800lb gorilla.
I used to have a Chase card, but decided I didn’t like dealing with them, so I closed the account.
And then they bought my bank, and I had a Chase account again. I gave them a chance and they were still awful, so I switched banks.
A couple years after that, they bought my bank, and I had a Chase account again. This isn’t a duplicate paragraph, it happened again. I gave them a chance again, and they were still awful, so I switched banks again (to a credit union, which, fingers crossed).
Now I guess I get to do business with Chase again, which is neat. I’m happy to be part of an economy where I can vote with my dollar like this.
Far be it from me to get in the way of someone protesting megabank centralization, but...
I have to imagine that this bank relationship will be different from those previous acquisitions? I never interacted with Goldman Sachs for the duration I've had my Apple Card—the relationship is entirely with Apple and their iOS app. I don't imagine that to be much different when Chase is the issuer.
I have a couple store brand cards backed by Chase (like the Amazon one) and they are basically exactly like any other first party Chase card. They show up on the Chase dashboard. You call Chase customer service for issues. Payments happen through Chase. The card benefits are all provided by Chase. The only difference is that there's Amazon printed in front and the points the card earns aren't regular Chase points. Of course their relationship with Apple could be different, but I doubt it'll be anything like the Goldman one. Remember that Goldman didn't have a consumer business at all before they got into the partnership.
"Of course their relationship with Apple could be different, but I doubt it'll be anything like the Goldman one" I can nearly guarantee this is completely wrong. It will be just like Goldman. That's literally the point of getting the card, is do everything through Apple and Goldman is just the backbone and support (through Apple's UI). Apple's contract with Goldman was until 2030, they wouldn't let Goldman out of it unless they were able to find a new partner with same or better experience and terms. They could have choose Synchrony, etc if Chase didn't agree. And clearly Chase was willing to concede to Apple since they don't even offer high yield savings, but agreed to for Apple since thats part of their existing offerings. Right now Apple decides the Promos for Apple Card, and at most maybe Chase will have a little more involvement in those but probably not. So in realty the only real world change is probably better customer support than Sachs, and Chase may not offer higher risks customers credit or as much like Goldman did and finally they may not offer the very low APR's that Apple card is known for, for it's best customers.
AFAIK in the current setup, only the UI is Apple's; any time you message customer service or open a dispute, that is handled directly by Goldman employees, and decisions to raise/lower your credit limit are also made by Goldman. All of those parts will be handled by Chase now.
Have to disagree there. While the iOS wallet apple is all apple and thats what you will use for checking your statements and making payments which is great. But anytime I have to actually interact with for support that is 100% with Goldman. When you do you support through the iMessage chat feature it's all Goldman on the other end, not Apple at all. And I've had to deal with them far too many times, and each time was absolutely terrible. Because of Goldman but also because of the platform Apple gives them for support, since you send a message have to wait for a text response. So feels like a chat but unlike a chat responses can take a while more like email, but then if they respond and you dont respond very fast then it closes it out and your response triggers a how can we help and you start all over, which is unlike email. So it's the worst of Chat and the worst of Email. Hopefully that is revamped with the new relationship. And if you have to call you get Sachs not Apple. Chase isn't great but expect much better than Sachs.
My problem with Chase and PNC is that their "fraud detection" seems to be random die rolls or monkeys throwing darts at my picture on a wall. I love the 5 minutes of anxiety after each and every purchase where I wonder if it will just randomly fail.
We’ll find out, but it still sort of sticks in the craw to be stuck doing business with them again.
What made you not like dealing with them?
Maybe I’m a passive user, but my credit cards are autopay set it and forget it. As someone with no opinion on cc companies, curious what gave you such a bad impression.
I’ve had the good fortune of working with actually good banks with actually good customer service, and Chase always sticks out for how indifferent they are. If you don’t need anything beyond the app, sure, they’re probably fine - although I seem to remember them shoving ads in my transaction feed - but I’ve never had luck getting ahold of a human with any variety of autonomy or agency when I needed one.
they have very strict AML controls as well. For example if you regularly withdraw a few thousand in cash to pay contractors for a house project they may close your account.
From what I've heard, they have an obnoxious fraud workflow.
It is possible to get locked out of your card abroad and not have a way to unlock it.
I’ve disputed fraud a couple of times on my Chase cards. It was.. fine? Uneventful and simple.
Their problem is with false positives they find, not true positives you find. My application for a credit card was somehow flagged as fraudulent. Chase repeatedly asked for additional forms of ID, then told me the scans I sent were illegible. (The scans were fine; I think they just needed an excuse.) I went to a branch with the physical documents, and they said they couldn't look at them. The branch put me in an office and called the same telephone support, with the same result. I eventually gave up.
I guess I'm lucky they rejected me before any money changed hands. I've heard horror stories from people with significant assets at their bank, locked out until an actual lawsuit (the letter from a lawyer didn't work) finally got their attention. I think it's like Google support, usually fine but catastrophic when it's not.
> The branch put me in an office and called the same telephone support, with the same result.
As far as I can tell, going to a branch of a big bank to address a problem nowadays is similar to going to a cellphone store for tech support. All they can really do is call the same hotline or fill out the same webform you’d have access to at home.
Anecdotal but just came back from 2 weeks abroad and didn’t have to take any action to continue using my chase card. Also I believe the conversion rate was better than the local.
Did you have first republic? RIP. I miss that bank so much.
Yup, that was one of them. Chase botched transferring the bill pay over after spending 3 months saying they’d transfer bill pay and then told me over the phone they hadn’t said that while I was looking at the current page on their website that said they’d transfer bill pay.
First Republic was great - they were the reason I didn’t go to a credit union sooner. Schwab also has amazing customer service, if you’re still searching for a new home and aren’t willing to make the leap to a CU.
Just want to point out that people have said it’s been very very hard to get Goldman Sachs to dispute a transaction, so I’m hoping that Chase will offer better service than Goldman as Goldman’s actual service is supposedly not very good.
Creeping fees if accidentally pass a withdrawal limit, not to mention abysmal interest rates for parking your money there.
Same and Same. Closed account because of bad experiences. Later they bought my bank. Raised prices 10x+ and lowered services. Got out ASAP.
Sounds like a recursive function
>Now I guess I get to do business with Chase again, which is neat. I’m happy to be part of an economy where I can vote with my dollar like this.
You were unusually unlucky. The US has a very decentralized banking system, with thousands of institutions. The Big Four (JPM, BAC, C, WFC) have under 50% of total deposits; the comparable figure for Canada's Big Five is ~85%,
Switch to Android and you should be safe.
What is awful though? Like what was wrong. I have one of their Amazon cards and their app is decent and their card has all the standard functionality.
Chase spelled my name incorrectly on my account. It took several phone calls over 2-3 months to get it fixed. Humorously awful, I guess.
Goldman Sachs was new to consumer banking and it has long been apparent that Apple outplayed them with the Apple Card deal, causing them to lose a lot of money, and so they have been wanting to get out of it: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/10/16/goldman-sachs-reg...
This is impressive because whenever I hear Goldman Sachs, this line by Matt Taibbi comes to mind:
(https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-grea...)This only works until you find a bigger vampire squid (Apple).
That article is dated April 2010. iPhone 4 came out Jun 2010. Finance was already in the process of taking a back seat to tech.
HST’esque
I don’t really get why it’s a bad deal for GS or how “Apple outplayed them” based on that article. Just seems like a frayed partnership cause they didn’t hit their numbers.
The Apple Card has a lot of sub-prime borrowers because Apple pushed to approve almost everyone.
Plus Apple had things structured for fewer fees to be charged than normal cards for late payments, foreign transactions, etc.
That combination meant GS didn’t see the expected profit and in fact lost money (reportedly).
Does that mean that this new partnership will be better because Chase is better at consumer banking than Goldman Sachs, or Chase negotiated a deal that will not cause them to lose a lot of money?
If it's the latter, does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
> If it's the latter, does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
Can it really get worse? All they do is a 2% cash back if you use Apple Pay, and 1% if you use the physical card. Ok if you buy directly from Apple it’s 3% back but that’s hardly “good” - you get a couple of bucks for buying an AirPod.
The Apple Card has no interesting perks compared to existing Chase offerings.
> Does that mean that this new partnership will be better because Chase is better at consumer banking than Goldman Sachs, or Chase negotiated a deal that will not cause them to lose a lot of money?
The partnership between Apple and Chase is not new, even though this particular credit card product offering is. There is another quite popular form of payment Apple has supported for years which necessitated this partnership to be established.
I predict the perks will get worse. Chase already lost money on Sapphire Reserve so they're probably not eager to do that again.
> does that mean that the card rewards for Apple Card will get worse?
the card rewards for AC were pretty awful in the first place. It's only useful as a store card that offers 0% financing.
the deal is probably more in favor of chase when it comes to the fee schedule and various issuing bank and interchange fees (ie, the ~2-3% that card networks charge to merchants)
The savings accounts are through GS as well. The transition page basically says “nothing to announce yet”, in a way that implies they may move somewhere as well.
WSJ says you’ll be able to choose between keeping your savings account at Goldman or switching it to Chase.
It’s interesting when you look at the FAQ that everything will still be managed on the iPhone and nothing will go through Chase’s portal.
It may seem irrelevant for some, but I wonder: will they still offer the laser-etched titanium card instead of plastic?
It was really the only reason I considered getting one. I suspect this will be relevant to more people than you might expect- iirc it's the only titanium (metal?) credit card you can get without an annual fee.
Part of this is J.P. Morgan Chase paying for customer base. JPMC can't legally buy any banks anymore unless it's at an fdic auction for a failed bank. That means that the only way to bring in new customers is organic growth and taking over company/store cards from other banks. If JPMC sees an ROI on this, I expect that they will start aggressively going after established store card like the old navy/gap card or airline cards like the American Airlines card. They instantly get thousands of new customers to market their other services to, can offer cross promotion into their most valuable fee cards (sapphire reserve) for less cost, and get to expand their market information gathering operation that feeds into their investment banking and commercial banking lines of business to inform better understanding of the market.
more discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46536848
For the purposes of this post, American Express is not germane and thus omitted.
To fully understand this press release, we have to start with "the five circles" diagram which shows the simplest form of the entities involved in credit card processing:
Now, companies which are neither a bank nor sponsored by a bank cannot directly interact with a Payment Network. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, none of them. Those companies must use a Processor (more on this later).Which is why Chase (or bank equivalent) must be the "new issuer of Apple Card", since only an Issuer can do so (as illustrated above).
An important concept to revisit is that only banks or companies sponsored by banks can connect to a Payment Network. Companies sponsored by banks in order to enable them to directly communicate on a Payment Network are typically other banks and often have to give up an ownership stake to their sponsor.
Which means there must exist another element in the "five circles" diagram to explain offerings such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, etc.:
Here, "ISO" are the payment services such as the aforementioned Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, and friends. Ultimately, though, it is a bank which is the Processor which powers them. And in the Processor space, Chase is the 800lb gorilla.[flagged]