Episode Details

How did Apple’s credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs completely fall apart? Goldman Sachs decided to make a push in retail banking a few years ago with Marcus and the Apple Card portfolio. That strategy proved a failure and Goldman decided to get out of that end of the banking business. Marcus was closed, loans sold off and the Apple Card portfolio became the last piece. The set up of the Apple Card was unusual from the start with Apple insisting on customers getting a statement at the beginning of each month, no late fees, and every applicant being approved. This caused Goldman to have customer service issues, a high level of delinquency, and large losses on the portfolio. To get JPMorgan to purchase the portfolio, Goldman had to take a $1 billion dollar haircut and agreed to backstop a certain percentage of the portfolio from future losses. Ultimately, it could take up to 2 years to transfer the portfolio from Goldman to JPMorgan. This episode reviewed an article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “Behind the unraveling of Apple’s credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs.”