[pdc56]

I vaguely remember _years_ ago, someone, perhaps here on HN but not sure, predicted Apple would become a bank. It seemed insane at the time... from memory it was maybe around 2010 or perhaps earlier.

Does that ring any bells for anyone here? Id love to re-read it and know the exact date

[antoinog]

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=3&prefix=false&qu...

[lotsofpulp]

Why does this move indicate they are closer to being a bank? Also, Apple’s profit margins are already much better than a retail bank’s, so why would Apple want to get into that business and be subject to all that extra bureaucracy?

[zamnos]

As to why, A) given Apple's lawyers, I'm sure they can structure the deal so as to minimize exposure to regulations for the rest of the empire, and B) they like money. Judging from how much of it they have, they really like money. More to the point though, banking sucks - as did smartphones for a lot of reasons before the iPhone, so if Apple thinks they can make a better product for their customers, they totally would.

Given their inroads into the space already, it's not that far fetched that they wouldn't need to in order to accomplish their goals, simply by co-opting their current partner, Goldman Sachs, which is a bank.

Why this current move moves them closer to being a bank, it means they're now running savings accounts for consumers, which is a very bank-shaped thing to do.

[lotsofpulp]

> As to why, A) given Apple's lawyers, I'm sure they can structure the deal so as to minimize exposure to regulations for the rest of the empire, and B) they like money. Judging from how much of it they have, they really like money.

Everyone really likes money. If Apple wanted to, they could just buy Goldman Sachs in cash, it is worth a small fraction of Apple. Or any number of small banks, but there is huge regulatory risk involved, and it is not necessarily true that all opportunities for profit are worth the risks and costs.

As far as I understand, the regulatory hurdles for starting and operating a bank are so big and the ROI so low that pretty much no new bank gets started these days, and only old ones get bought for those who want to get into the banking business.

https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/29/investing/dodd-frank-new-ba...

> it means they're now running savings accounts for consumers,

Are they? Or is it better described as they have integrated their software with that of a bank’s database?

[etempleton]

I remember this comment and I think it makes a lot of sense that this is what companies do when they become huge and have excess cash on hand. Apple has a ton of cash and so something like this makes a lot of sense. They can absorb any short-term risk that it may introduce and likely it is structured in such a way that Goldman takes the majority of the risk anyway.

[DrStartup]

They aren’t a bank. More like a MVNO but instead of being a mobile carrier they are a value added reseller of a real bank (Goldman Sachs).

[senttoschool]

Until they're big enough to start their own banking license...