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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

GS is the lender whom a credit card owner is asking to pay a merchant. Why would you not expect GS to have the transaction information? They are the ones paying the merchant at the request of the credit card owner.

Not to mention card transaction data is already available for sale, and by the network owners, nevermind the banks!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...

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I mean, what are the chances that Goldman doesn’t sell that info?

It does seem odd for Apple to choose to hand that data over to the bank with the absolute least scruples. GS has made a name for themselves screwing their own customers.

I would’ve hoped Apple would partner with a smaller bank that has something to gain, and then say something like “because we care about your privacy, we have partnered with Bank X to develop the first credit card with truly private transactions” or something like that.

The fact that they just leak the data to the credit card industry is odd. With all their cash they could’ve bought a bank and issued the card themselves. Hopefully that’s their endgame.

Regardless of the bank and Apple’s privacy stance, MasterCard/Visa/Discover/AmEx would have the info anyway, and they can sell it too.

> “because we care about your privacy, we have partnered with Bank X to develop the first credit card with truly private transactions”

It would have been awesome if Apple provided the lender and Visa/Mastercard/AMEX with a non-transferable license to use client/transaction data with Apple being the owner of the data.

Couldn’t that still be the deal? Certainly Goldman is in a position to use this data for something profitable in-house that doesn’t seriously impact privacy at an individual level (there are probably valuable signals in the transaction data when it comes to algorithmic trading), and it seems out of step with their broader privacy strategy for Apple to give Goldman unfettered rights to use the data however they want.

> With all their cash they could’ve bought a bank and issued the card themselves.

In the US, you can't buy a bank without becoming a bank. Becoming a bank involves a lot of additional regulation.

Is it possible to have a credit card with truly private transactions? The lender (GS) has to pay the merchant (Walmart) in your behalf. How can they do that without the transaction data? And if you want to dispute a charge, how can the lender allow for that if they don’t know the transaction belongs to you?

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