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JPMorgan Chase has held initial talks with Apple about taking over the iPhone maker’s credit card programme, which is currently managed by Goldman Sachs, according to people familiar with the matter.
The discussions were at an early stage and an agreement may not materialise, the people cautioned. The talks, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, are the latest effort for Apple and Goldman to untangle their credit card partnership that launched in 2019, which now has about $17bn in balances.
The companies declined to comment.
Apple last year proposed winding down its credit card and savings account partnership with Goldman, which has been paring back its retail banking ambitions after years of losses.
Part of the talks have focused on JPMorgan looking to move Apple away from a practice under its partnership with Goldman where it would bill all card customers at the start of the month, as opposed to spreading those out — a policy that can lead to a logjam of customer service queries.
JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has repeatedly called out Apple, as well as other tech companies, as emerging competitors to traditional banks in offering financial services to customers.
“Apple moves money, holds money, lends money,” Dimon said at an investor event earlier this year. “They’re becoming a bank.” JPMorgan is the largest US bank, with more than $2tn in deposits.
Credit card partnerships like these typically work by a company like Apple putting its brand on the card. The bank maintains the underlying infrastructure and does the lending.
Goldman’s partnership with Apple was treated at the time as a landmark deal for the Wall Street bank in its nascent retail banking business. It built a platform from scratch for Apple and agreed terms that other traditional providers of corporate credit card partnerships would not.
Goldman’s retail banking efforts have not panned out as planned for the firm, which makes the bulk of its profits from Wall Street businesses such as investment banking and trading, as it racked up billions of dollars in losses. Goldman has now scaled back much of its retail business.
Goldman also supports Apple’s savings account, which launched last year.
