Financial Economics - Apple and Goldman Sachs launch a savings account

Is Apple becoming a bank? Or can Apple draw many of the benefits of being a financial services provider without becoming a commercial bank outright? This is a super interesting development in the USA. For years, savers have seen nominal returns on their deposits lagging well behind inflation.

Please read: Apple and Goldman offer US savings account with 4.15% annual interest (FT)

Depositors in the USA have taken tens of billions of $s out of conventional commercial bank savings accounts in recent months as the banking system has become more fragile and depositor protection has been under threat. Now two behemoths are combining to offer a new savings account to customers with an Apple pay credit card. The California tech giant and Wall Street bank have launched a new savings account yielding 4.15 per cent a year, having first announced the product in October.

Here is some data on the size of the Apple Pay business:

• Number of users: Apple Pay has over 500 million users worldwide.
• Number of merchants: Apple Pay is accepted by over 70 million merchants in over 20 countries.
• Annual transaction volume: Apple Pay processed over $6 trillion in transactions in 2022.
• Market share: Apple Pay has a market share of over 20% in the global mobile payments market.
• Growth rate: Apple Pay is growing at a rate of over 30% per year.

These data points show that Apple Pay is a major player in the mobile payments market. It is growing rapidly and has a large user base and merchant acceptance footprint. Apple Pay is also profitable for Apple, generating billions of dollars in revenue each year.