Goldman Sachs is seeking to end its Apple Card partnership with Apply before their contract expires.
According to a report from Reuters, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told analysts in an earnings call on Wednesday that there’s “some possibility” the company’s credit card deal with the Silicon Valley giant could come to an end before their contract runs out in 2030. This comes after a Wall Street Journal report from November 2023 saying the deal would end within 12 to 15 months, as the bank wants out of the consumer business.
“We have a contract with Apple to run that partnership until 2030, although there’s some possibility that it won’t continue until that time frame,” Soloman said.
Goldman Sachs entered the partnership with Apple when it launched the Apple Card in 2019, which has since gained over 12 million users as of last year. The credit card partnership turned out to be a troubled one, as it caused a laundry list of issues for the bank, including intense regulatory scrutiny, customer service problems over billing, and a net loss $1 billion last January. The billing part was due to Apple’s insistence on sending out credit card bills to everybody at the beginning of every month rather than on a rolling basis like most credit card companies.
The problems that arose from the Apple Card partnership caused Goldman Sachs to find ways out of the deal, including talking to American Express and JPMorgan Chase about taking over the Apple Card. Meanwhile, Apple had been in talks with Synchrony Financial, Capital One and Chase about the same thing. The 15-month mark for Goldman Sachs to end the Apple Card partnership comes up in February. We’ll see what happens then.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.