Speaking of accounting, is there any indication if and how information will get out of Wallet and into MoneyDance/Quicken/etc.?
Good questions, Alan. I have a third one: will the “monthly” invoice be mailed or will it just be a PDF that has to be printed? I pay my credit card bills by check so I’ll need an invoice stub I can mail in with the payment.
If not via QIF, CSV, or OFX, then you may have to manually enter it. Of course that is what I do now immediately on making a credit card transaction, rather than using the sparse info included it the various download files.
Perhaps that will be added at a latter date, Adam. First, let Apple get the initial bugs worked out then maybe they can add a form of Family Sharing.
In my experience, the fee was supposedly to recover exchange rate costs.
Foreign exchange fees are communicated as “to recover exchange rate costs” but they are also a huge money maker for both the card networks (Visa/Mastercard/Amex) and to a lesser extent the banks. In addition to shopping the most favorable exchange rate for the transaction, there is a 2.5% - 3% markup applied as a “convenience charge”.
I think it’s reasonable for consumers to be divided as to the fairness of this. After all, it is much more convenient not to have to convert and carry foreign currency. But there are ways around this which the truly savvy consumers will use if they find that to be worth the time value of money relative to the savings.
“No foreign exchange fee” cards do away with this convenience fee but still may shop the most favorable exchange rate for themselves, meaning you might be a few basis points above the best possible exchange rate, but save the 2.5% - 3% compared to a “normal” card.
My experience is with Chase which is relatively fair in their application of conversion rates. My recent overseas charges show less than 15 cents per $100 of variation between the wholesale rates and the rates Chase used–very acceptable!
2 Likes
Indeed - while Jeff noted that foreign exchange fees were “a few tenths of a percent extra in the exchange rate”, on a family trip to Europe that costs $3000 that would be $90. For people taking a couple such trips a year, it’s easy to understand why they might search out a card that has no foreign exchange fees like your examples from Chase.
Um, no. That would be the case if it were 3%.
“A few tenths of a % extra” as per Jeff means it’s likely ~$10 for a $3000 vacation. Ten bucks on a several thousand $ trip I find highly acceptable. I know that a conventional currency exchange would charge me a lot more for that exchange in cash. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I find $10 for that extra convenience perfectly reasonable if I’m spending $3k anyway on that vacation.
Traditionally, US credit cards have charged a fee of 3% or so for any transaction conducted in a foreign currency. This is independent of the currency exchange rate which is usually very close to the neutral rate you’ll see in currency exchange apps and tables. By the way, most credit cards that I am familiar with use the rate promulgated by the card brand for the day; so that all Visa cards have the same rate; all Mastercards have the same rate, etc. In general, this is a better rate than you will find doing any cash exchange.
A competitive feature of some credit cards is to drop the 3% charge. For example, among credit cards I am familiar with, the Amex Blue has the charge and the Chase Southwest Card has it. However the Chase British Airways card does not have it, and the Citibank Costco card dropped it recently. The Apple card will join the latter group.
Traditionally, US credit cards have charged a fee of $3 or so for any transaction conducted in a foreign currency.
I think you mean 3% or even higher. It’s not a flat rate. I used the wrong card buying a Eurail pass a few years ago. I did it online in the US before my trip and didn’t even think about it being a “foreign transaction” — my $400 payment got me charged an extra $46 for the foreign transaction fee.
That’s a huge percentage. 
Thanks,
Yes, my mistake. It’s been so long since I switched to a ’no fee’ card when I travel that I messed up the explanation. I have edited the original response.
You’re fully entitled to dislike Sachs, but at least be aware (as others have noted here already) that institutions this size are large and varied. Banks’ investment arms are typically isolated from their commercial banking operations (everyday business and consumer usage), and are often licensed separately. Essentially they share a company brand name, but the staff are very separate. After the ‘2008 economic event’, they also churned both policies (as govt imposed slightly tighter regulation) and people; the questionable ones have likely moved on to elsewhere anyway.
AFAIU, it’s similar to most European banking. Here in London, banks are required to keep the businesses separate to avoid the possibility of risk spreading from the relatively more risky investment banking (typically including pensions, and OEIC’s/unit trusts, et al.).
Certain of our banks had the same bad banking issues, but really, the world of banking is in many ways small enough that you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they’re very interlinked organisations.
A company the size and type of Apple does its due diligence enough for customers to know they’re not going to jump into bed with some fly-by-night. And anyway, this is not your bank account, but a separate credit (i.e. debt) facility, so they can’t access your actual money.
As in basis points, so 30% of 1% percent, you’d mean 30 basis points.
(One for the economically trained people out there. 
re. Jeff’s original article:
This bit I find a bit hard to believe:
Here is where Apple gets to exercise its power in an interesting way: miss a normal credit card payment and it costs you money, but miss an Apple Card payment and every Apple device you own might degrade in service. Just as failing to pay for iCloud prevents any new uploads to your paid iCloud storage, Apple could deter you from going into arrears on Apple Card by affecting everything you do with an Apple ID. If you’re paying for other Apple services, you might also lose access to Apple Music, be unable to purchase new apps, or have problems using apps that require ongoing subscriptions. Now consider the free services Apple provides, such as iCloud password and calendar syncing, which could also be suspended at the same time or at a later date for customers who still haven’t paid.
Apple doesn’t need your late fees. Apple could apply pressure in other ways to make sure Apple Card is the first card you pay.
Really? Has this been proven with facts from the small print or elsewhere, as it sounds rather unlikely that Apple would remove iCloud services as an incentive to pay your credit card bill (partially or in full).
Surely that’s rather a cross-contamination of services, that I’d find it rather likely that US authorities wouldn’t look kindly to such persecutory practices being allowable.
Surely they’d just increase your interest rate, reduce your card limit, or cancel your card after repeated errors by the user.
EDIT: Actually I just heard seconds ago on MacBreak Weekly, they’re not doing this, but rather the failed payment will simply appear on your credit file as “July: missed payment”, “August: missed payment”. So other credit facilities will end-up being affected, when those lenders see how bad you are at making payments.
Gosh credit scoring/rating/files (depending on your country) is a minefield. If you pay everything in full and on time they don’t like you as they’re making no money in interest, conversely if you’re crap and have debts unpaid, they don’t like you either (they’re not getting paid back &/or bankruptcy-type things). No, what they want is someone who is kind-of in debt, but not so much they cannot make payments, and you continue to make them!
1 Like
Yes, such concerns are without any basis. Not going to be an issue or even close to it.
We USED to have laws regulating this… they are no longer… I hope you do realize we are in an age of the dismantling of any and all regulations that provide any protections for consumers (just look at who heads Treasury)… along with the air we breathe and the water we drink.
As for the “card” it’s something very tightly integrated with their phone… I don’t have or need that kind of phone AND I would never,ever have any involvement with anything attached to Goldman, they are the true vultures of our day. I’ll repeat a comment I made on FB… “All your finances belong to us.” that!
Regardless of the level of separation between the investment and retail sections, Goldman Sachs’s retail operation does not have an ethical policy as far as I can tell. I’m not willing to have my spending profit a bank that is then investing in industries and causes I don’t agree with. Given Apple’s ethical policies, I would have hoped they’d gone with a financial institution that had an ethical investment policy.
It’s very clearly written as speculation with “might” and “could.” I pushed back on it in editing too because it seemed extremely unlikely and legally problematic to me as well; this text was where we ended up.
Obviously, there’s no way of knowing for sure what will be true until Apple Card actually becomes available, but the point to ponder is that Apple’s business is encompassing multiple industries, each with their own ongoing services and fees. Apple is working hard to tie things together on the user-facing side, so it’s not inconceivable there could be additional connections elsewhere in the business model.
1 Like
…
Gosh credit scoring/rating/files (depending on your country) is a minefield. If you pay everything in full and on time they don’t like you as they’re making no money in interest, conversely if your crap and have debts unpaid, they don’t like you either (they’re not getting paid back &/or bankruptcy-type things). No, what they want is someone who is kind-of in debt, but not so much they cannot make payments, and you continue to make them!
Based on my experience, I believe that it is a myth that if you have no loan history and always pay your credits cards within the grace period (so, no interest), you are considered a bad credit risk. I have never owned a home, always paid cash for a car, and with the exception of misreading a statement every few years, always pay my credit card statement in full. I Have several credit cards with ridiculously high limits so that my utilization numbers are low. I do charge most non-trivial expenses, finding that I need to replenish cash less than once a month. Still, my credit rating is apparently in the 95th percentile. So, the credit companies make money from me on what they siphon off on purchases, not on direct charges (interest) to me. Apparently, they are happy with that, as I still get mumerous offers for no-fee cards.
Yeah, I was being a bit tongue in cheek – a bit of a comic-book explanation of how cc companies see their users in a simplistic outsider-looking-in view! 
They do. Centered under the article title.
The oldest article was from November 3, 2018.
But, yes, details can change a lot in a few months. My picking those over the few hundred other was they give an overview of how things work.
As someome who has been on the thin end of the asset and income spectrum at one point in my life here’s my take. If these issues apply to you DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD. End of conversation. If you can’t pay the full balance every month[1], pay on time every month, and never exceed your limit, DO NOT GET A CREDIT CARD. That is all there is to it.
[1] Yes there are situations where a credit card will offer to spread out payments for 0%. But you MUST make every payment on time or you get back billed the full interest charge.
1 Like