Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that Apple Card (credit and savings) aren't available outside the US yet.

A financial product that is only available to iPhone users seems like a reasonable business, but if it's only available in one market it's limited and you can't build much else on top because it's slicing the market to granularly.

I realise that international financial products are hard, but isn't that the reason why Apple is delegating the finance part to Goldman Sachs (and I suppose, theoretically, others in other countries) – so that they don't need to deal with the nitty gritty in each region?

View on HN

You probably want a credit rating for financial products, and that’s independent to a specific country.

They could expand to Europe and Canada without too much effort, but I’m not surprised to see them start with the US.

Starting with the US makes sense, but 2 years later not having launched elsewhere and launching a new US-only product, that feels like longer than I expected.

You’d probably need different banking partners in each region, so it’s like a whole new product.

Not too many options that are high spending countries with plenty of iPhones but also a regulation wild west and people willing to pile on hundreds of thousands in high APY debt like the US

a true sweet spot

Less than half of French people even have a single credit card

> Less than half of French people even have a single credit card

Got a source ?

https://www.cartes-bancaires.com/cb/chiffres/ says 76M cards over a population of 67M (50M for people over 18yo). Sure some people have multiple cards, but that sounds hard to believe. (Also that's not counting non-CB credit cards. Those are pretty rare in France, but I have one)

(Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said in "a single credit card")

this is a quick link https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098129/credit-cards-and...

adoption across countries https://www.statista.com/statistics/968220/credit-card-owner...

your link seems to be confusing debit cards with credit cards

Apple card is not a debit card, which is widely used in Europe, with much less credit card/debt normalized vs. the US

Ah thanks, that indeed clears up my confusion.

I don't understand how is that relevant to savings or Apple Card though? I mean sure Apple Card is currently a credit card, but I don't think that's relevant? In France most banks just give the customer the choice between credit and debit cards, and we just mostly prefer debit cards. Apple could probably just do that as well.

That being said, I guess the reason there is no Apple Card in Europe, is that you can't make 2%+ markup on card payments.

> people willing to pile on hundreds of thousands in high APY debt like the US

That’s a pretty unfair characterization of CC borrowing in the US. I’m sure there are some instances of that but most people have either a minimal amount on CC or none at all.

I would think it will vary greatly by location and status. I'm 34 and in a fairly low income area / states. The only people I know that aren't drowning in credit card debt are people that manage to be financially responsible enough to never get one at all.

I thought myself fairly responsible until the pandemic hit and now I'm nearly $18K in the hole on credit cards I'm crawling out from under slowly.

Are there any good options to get decent APY on Eur or USD deposits in Europe?

IBKR pays interest on cash accounts with APY dependent on currency and amount of money invested: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/pricing-...

Thanks, that’s news to me! Does the APY fluctuate much? That is, is there a good chance they’ll drop it to 0 next month?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com