How Apple and Goldman Sachs are faring in consumer finance

Apple and Goldman Sachs have both made multi-billion-dollar bets on consumer finance — in one case, together. So far, the larger, less regulated tech company seems to be having more success than the systemically important bank.

Why it matters: Apple Pay was launched in 2014; Marcus, the consumer-facing bank from Goldman Sachs, in 2016. The companies’ joint credit card, the Apple Card, came in 2019. But only now are we beginning to get a feel for how the two companies’ strategies are faring.

The big picture: Apple and Goldman are established legacy businesses with balance sheets in the hundreds of billions of dollars, but they’re also relative newcomers when it comes to consumer finance.

Where it stands: Apple has quietly built a global juggernaut in Apple Pay, its contactless payments technology that has expanded from its early days on American Express, MasterCard and Visa to support 24 different payment networks around the world, including local debit and e-money networks. It’s now in 65 countries and has signed up more than 10,000 banks.

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