Apple has partnered with Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs to provide a new savings account that offers a highly competitive 4.15 percent interest rate.
The new service, known as the Apple Card, does not require a minimum deposit or balance and can be set up easily from the Wallet app on people's iPhones.
Apple said in a press release that all Daily Cash rewards earned through the Apple Card will automatically be deposited into a user's savings account. Daily Cash is a cashback program that offers up to three percent cashback on purchases.
Apple Card users will also be able to manage their accounts through a dashboard on the Wallet app. This dashboard will allow users, among other things, to track their interest, their account balance, withdraw their funds and change where their Daily Cash rewards are deposited, such as a bank linked to the Apple Card account.
"Our goal is to build tools that help users lead healthier lives," said Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, in a statement. "Savings help our users get even more value out of their favorite Apple Card benefit – Daily Cash – while providing them with an easy way to save money every day,"
The Apple Card is fee free and offers a maximum balance of up to $250,000. Because the deposits sit with Goldman Sachs, it has access to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protections.
App-based banking service comes as American distrust over traditional banking grows
The new savings account deepens Apple's offering of financial services products, which currently also includes a "buy now, pay later" loan program.
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The company touted the 4.15 percent annual percentage yield (APY) as being more than 10 times the average savings rate offered by most banks, which is currently a paltry 0.35 percent APY, according to data from the FDIC.
The Apple Card's interest rate also puts many of its competitors in online banking to shame. American Express only offers an interest rate of 3.75 percent. Goldman Sachs' own standalone savings account that operates under the Marcus brand offers 3.9 percent APY.
Only a few savings account options offered by certain credit unions and online banks offer comparable rates. CIT bank offers a 4.75 percent APY for customers with a minimum balance of $5,000. Vio Bank offers a savings account with a 4.77 percent APY with no minimum balance.
The offering of a new online banking service also comes as more established banks, in particular regional and small lenders, are under growing pressure to provide better savings rates for depositors to prevent them from transferring their cash to banks that provide higher yields. (Related: American banks are sitting on a TIME BOMB of $1.7 trillion in unrealized losses.)
Customers have already pulled about $800 billion in deposits from many commercial banks since March last year when the Federal Reserve first started lifting interest rates.
The new savings account offering has fueled speculation that Apple wants to develop a full-fledged banking subsidiary. But Christian Owens, chief executive of the payments company Paddle, noted that Apple's real strength lies in hardware sales and non-banking services.
"I don't think Apple wants to be a bank," said Owens. "I think Apple can eke out the economics of the bank without actually becoming a bank. They can leverage with Goldman to power all of these financial services and be the conduit to the consumer for a lot of these things, brand it as Apple, take that high-margin cut and offload all of this sort of underlying responsibility to Goldman."
Watch this clip from "The Next Revolution" on Fox News as host Steve Hilton discusses why it's time to call out Apple for colluding with China and betraying America.
This video is from the News Clips channel on Brighteon.com.
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