Apple and Goldman Sachs don’t believe in new deposit service customers | coindesk JAPAN | Coindesk Japan

Users of Apple Savings, a savings service launched in the US in April by Apple in partnership with Goldman Sachs, have reported severe delays in withdrawals and transfers.

For many, $100,000 ($140,000) has been trapped in Apple Savings accounts, leaving customers struggling for weeks to get their money back.

I just opened an account and made a deposit.

The explanation for the delay is plausible, at least by the odd standards of the traditional financial system. In many cases, restricted deposits underwent a “security review.” In other words, Goldman Sachs was checking whether depositors were laundering money.

The ridiculousness of this situation is layer upon layer, like anti-customer and clumsy banking. This time, the bank’s security review was triggered by a large deposit into a new savings account.

Still, with Apple touting a higher-than-average interest rate of 4.15%, it should have been expected to attract a lot of deposits.

Even ordinary non-criminal people use savings accounts to keep their money. And Apple’s new service only launched a few weeks ago, so it makes sense that the account would be new.

In other words, according to Apple’s marketing, if you open a new Goldman Sachs-managed bank account and deposit a large amount of money, by default you will be presumed to be a money launderer, and your deposit will be frozen immediately and indefinitely. It seems that it is supposed to be done.

Housing down payment frozen

An examination of those targeted by Goldman Sachs’ poor anti-money laundering measures makes that bleak nightmare even clearer.

One of the victims interviewed by The Wall Street Journal was Grammy Award-winning musician Antonio Sanchez. He’s the sort of person you can easily google and call and know he’s not laundering money.

But like other victims, Sanchez spent weeks in a customer service labyrinth trying to recover a frozen $100,000 down payment on a home. It was decided to fight. Sanchez ended up borrowing money from his mother-in-law. It’s a nightmare beyond nightmares.

What if there were no Grammy Awards? It won’t get any better.

A successful method for several interviewed clients was to get the Wall Street Journal to contact Goldman Sachs for an interview. However, such a solution does not work for most people.

whose money is…

Goldman Sachs has struggled to serve retail customers, rather than being a retail-focused bank.

But it also coincides with a broader trend in the traditional banking industry to shift away from meaningful customer service to an increasingly automated, indifferent, or even hostile, approach to petty individual depositors. ing.

What makes this anti-customer trend so pernicious is the completely non-transparent anti-money policy that effectively controls all US bank account deposits, without exception. This is because the laundering system is combined.

A single mistake that would make a rigid algorithm or an underpaid data analyst even slightly suspicious could quickly put your property under review and reverse its verdict. have to wait until

Such suspicious activity now seems to include even “account opening” and “account depositing”.

Think about it. If the bank didn’t care who you were and had the power to freeze your deposits at any time, without explanation, indefinitely, would that be your money?

｜Translation and editing: Akiko Yamaguchi, Takayuki Masuda
｜Image: Shutterstock
｜Original: Apple and Goldman Sachs Don’t Trust Their New Banking Customers