Three decades ago, Apple wanted to be your personal computer provider and took a chunk out of the traditional PC market. Just over a decade ago, Apple pushed early smartphones out of the market with its iPhone, becoming the dominant wireless device in America. Today, it wants all your money, which is every dime of your savings. Unfortunately for banks, Apple probably will get what it wants again. (These companies control over half their industries.)
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In league with Goldman Sachs, Apple has offered a savings account with 4.15% interest. While several small banks can do better, who does not want Apple to be their banker when the alternative is some small savings bank with two offices or so?
The savings account will be attached to Apple Card, a fairly traditional credit card product. No one outside Apple knows how many people use these, but Apple pushes the card hard, so presumably, the count is fairly high.
Apple probably will not make much money on the cash itself. The 4.15% payout is rich and costly, even to Apple. However, it is another part of the glue created by Apple’s huge services business, including everything from music to TV and the App Store. These are meant to keep people who own Apple hardware continuing to own Apple hardware. Even if the iPhone were only the second-best smartphone in the world, it comes with a giant number of services only Apple offers.
Launching the savings account comes at a tough time for banking businesses. Medium and small banks are desperate to keep their deposits during what still could be a banking crisis. Apple did not release the new service because it wanted to damage a core sector of the economy, but that could happen anyway.
As people clean out their bank accounts and send the money to Apple, those who watch Apple can remember it used to be a small computer company.
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