Apple and Goldman offer a US savings account with 4.15% annual interest

Apple and Goldman Sachs are trying to lure American depositors into a new savings account by offering to pay interest at more than 10 times the national average rate.
The California tech giant and Wall Street bank on Monday launched a new savings account that pays 4.15 percent a year, after first announcing the product in October.
This is well above the average U.S. savings account interest rate of 0.37 percent, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It also beats rivals such as American Express, which offers 3.75 percent, and Goldman̵[ads1]7;s stand-alone savings account, which operates under the Marcus brand, which offers 3.9 percent.
The launch comes as more established banks, particularly regional and smaller lenders, are under increasing pressure to offer better savings rates for depositors to prevent them from transferring cash to higher-yielding products such as money market funds, which have delivered better returns as interest rates rise .
Customers have withdrawn about $800 billion in deposits from US commercial banks since last March, when the Fed first started raising interest rates after lenders kept deposit rates relatively low while paying more for loans.
The new savings account is offered to users of Apple’s credit card product, which is also a collaboration with Goldman. Apple offers savers no fees and no minimum deposit requirements. The maximum balance for an account is $250,000. Deposits will be held with Goldman, which as a licensed bank has access to FDIC insurance.
“Savings help our users get even more value . . . while giving them an easy way to save money every day,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.
The savings account expands Apple’s offering of financial services, which also includes a buy now pay later program.
As Apple adds more payments and financial services, commentators have suggested it is becoming a bank. But Apple’s real strength is that it makes money from hardware sales and non-banking services, said Christian Owens, CEO of Paddle, a payments company.
“I don’t think Apple wants to be a bank,” he said. “I think Apple can take the financials out of the bank without actually becoming a bank. They can use Goldman to run all these financial services and be the conduit to the consumer for a lot of these things, brand it as Apple, take the high margin cut and hand over all this kind of underlying responsibility to Goldman.”