One company has a devoted customer base teeming with wealthy, well-traveled young adults. The other is a financial powerhouse with few offerings for everyday consumers.
Now they are trying to join forces.
Apple and Goldman Sachs have been working for months on a new credit card product that would bear the Apple Pay brand, according to two people familiar with the companies’ talks.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were continuing.
The product would be Goldman’s first credit card offering and could help the bank’s effort to expand its consumer products. For Apple, the deal could help it extend its Apple Pay brand, the technology giant’s digital payment service.
The two companies have not settled on all the details, said one of the people.
Andrew Williams, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment. Christine Monaghan, an Apple spokeswoman, also declined to comment.
The partnership was reported earlier Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
The new card would fit into the suite of consumer products that Goldman recently began offering, like a savings account and an array of personal loans through its consumer banking service, Marcus. Goldman hopes to use those new products to reduce its reliance on trading revenue in the years to come.
The card could help Goldman insert itself into the lives of iPhone users, who represent a far broader swath of consumers than the company now serves, and eventually open them up to the other services the bank has to offer.
"This seems to make sense," said Devin Ryan, an analyst at JMP Securities, "It’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle that is forming that is Goldman Sachs’ consumer finance business."
Part of Goldman’s recent consumer buildup has focused on credit cards. In December, the bank hired a team from a credit card startup called Final. In April it bought a mobile app, Clarity Money, that helps users search for the best credit card deals. It has been downloaded 1 million times.
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