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.
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.
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.
It is possible to get locked out of your card abroad and not have a way to unlock it.
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.
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%,
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.
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).
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 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.
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)
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.
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.:
/-----------------\
| Payment Network |
\-----------------/
/ \
/--------\ /-----------\
| Issuer | | Processor |
\--------/ \-----------/
| |
| /-----\
| | ISO |
| \-----/
| |
/-------------\ /----------\
| Card Holder | | Merchant |
\-------------/ \----------/