Apple’s credit card gives Goldman rare customer role
APPLE Inc. launched a credit card last month, hoping to upend a US$ 175 billion industry much like it did the phone business. At a splashy event, the company made a simple sales pitch and showed off the titanium product in a slick video. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called it the “most significant change” to cards in 50 years. Unveiling it was the easy part. Apple, and partner Goldman Sachs Group Inc., are relative newbies to consumer credit. Apple has dabbled through its mobile payments service Apple Pay. Goldman offers Marcus personal loans. Now, both companies must learn quickly to master the messy process of payment disputes, customer service and statements.
Disputes are particularly tricky. Sometimes cardholders don’t recognise a merchant that they actually paid. Other times, the physical card or card number is stolen, leading to fraudulent purchases. And consumers can dispute a charge because they’re unhappy with a product they bought. Goldman will handle disputes. That’s common for co-branded credit cards. But it’s rare for Apple to let another company work with its users. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant prefers to manage the end-to- end experience of all its products, including customer interactions.
Apple also won’t see transactions from the new card, and Goldman won’t sell the data for advertising or other
I’m sure there’s a small segment of the population that will be completely satisfied with that chat route for servicing.
marketing. Both companies declined to comment.
Apple is tapping its iMessage texting service to help Goldman. That may handle simple issues like changing an address. There’s also a click-to- call feature in Apple’s Wallet app. That will put users through to an Apple support representative. But if there’s a dispute, the Apple rep will pass the caller to Goldman to resolve the issue.
“I’m sure there’s a small segment of the population that will be completely satisfied with that chat route for servicing,” said James Brown, chief executive officer of Smart Communications, which helps banks and insurers with customer service. However, if Apple “really wants to move into the mass market they’ll need to adopt forms of the other communication methods and statement methods that are more widely used.”
Apple will try to head off one common dispute problem before it reaches Goldman: When customers see a transaction on their statement they don’t understand because it’s listed under an unfamiliar merchant name.
“Many of you looking at your credit card statements today might recognise seeing transactions that look like this: cryptic merchant names that are pretty hard to decipher,” Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, said during the event last month. “With Apple Card we use machine learning and Apple Maps to transform this mess into names and locations that you’ll recognise.” — Bloomberg
James Brown, chief executive officer of Smart Communications