Apple and Goldman Sachs are trying to lure US depositors into a new savings account by offering to pay interest at more than 10 times the national average rate.
The California tech giant and Wall Street Bank on Monday launched a new savings account with a yield of 4.15 percent per year after first announcing the product in October.
That’s well above the average US savings account rate of 0.37 percent, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It also beats peers like American Express, which offers 3.75 percent, and Goldman’s standalone savings account, operated under the Marcus brand, which offers 3.9 percent.
The rollout comes as more established banks, particularly regional and smaller lenders, are under increasing pressure to offer depositors better savings rates to prevent them from moving cash into higher-yielding products like money market funds, which have offered better returns in line with the surge Interest charges.
Customers have withdrawn about $800 billion in deposits from US commercial banks since March last year, when the Fed first began raising rates after lenders kept deposit rates relatively low while charging more for loans.
The new savings account will be offered to users of Apple’s credit card product, which is also a partnership with Goldman. Apple offers savers no fees and no minimum deposit requirements. The maximum balance for an account is $250,000. Deposits are placed with Goldman, which, as a licensed bank, has access to FDIC insurance.
“Savings help our users get even more value. . . while giving them an easy way to save money every day,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.
The savings account expands Apple’s range of financial services products, which also includes a “buy now, pay later” program.
As Apple adds more payments and financial services, commentators have suggested it becomes a bank. But Apple’s real strength is that it makes money from hardware sales and non-banking services, said Christian Owens, chief executive of Paddle, a payments company.
“I don’t think Apple wants to be a bank,” he said. “I think Apple can get through the economics of banking without actually becoming a bank. You can use Goldman to run all of these financial services and be the conduit to the consumer for a lot of these things, brand it as Apple, make that high-margin cut, and offload all that underlying responsibility to Goldman. ”