Apple and Goldman Sachs Are Skeptical of Their Fresh Banking Clients, They Lack Confidence in Their Ability to Repay Loans and Maintain Accounts

Apple’s new Apple Savings program, launched in April in partnership with Goldman Sachs, has been plagued by delays in withdrawing funds or deferring deposits. The Wall Street Journal reports that customers have been struggling to recover amounts up to $100,000 from Apple Savings for weeks.

It is not unreasonable to explain the delays, at least by the standards of traditional finance. Goldman ensured its depositors were not involved in money laundering by freezing their funds.

This absurdity is nuanced and layered, like a souffle of anti-client, clumsy banking practices. A large deposit into a new bank account is one of the triggers for a security clearance. Apple’s savings service (4.15%) offers a higher-than-average interest rate, so it’s no wonder people deposit large amounts. Most of them do that with their savings accounts anyway. Since the savings service has only been available for a few weeks, the accounts are all new.

If you follow Apple’s marketing and open a large new savings account with Goldman Sachs, you will be deemed to be an illegal money launderer and your funds should be frozen immediately.

It becomes an even more dystopian nightmare when you consider the people targeted by Goldman Sachs’ clumsy anti-money laundering efforts.

Antonio Sanchez was a Grammy Award-winning musician who has worked with Trent Reznor and Dave Matthews. A quick Google search or phone call would have easily revealed that this person is unlikely to be an alleged money launderer. Sanchez and the other customers had to navigate a Kafkaesque maze of customer service for weeks to get $100,000 as a down payment on a house. In the end, Sánchez borrowed money from his mother-in-law: a real nightmare.

What if you’re not a Grammy winner? This will not change how you are treated. One solution that was successful for some of the clients profiled was to contact the Wall Street Journal . Goldman should be contacted with any problems. Most of us don’t have access to this customer service solution.

Goldman Sachs, a non-retail bank, has struggled to serve smaller customers. The incident also reflects a broader shift in traditional banking, away from meaningful customer service and toward an increasingly disinterested, hostile, and even automated approach to its small retail customers.

This anti-customer prejudice is toxic because it is a totally opaque money laundering system that appears to have undisputed effective control over all bank deposits in the United States. If you do something even slightly suspicious, an algorithm or data analyst may mark your property as “under review” until telling you otherwise.

This suspicious activity now appears to include ‘opening an account with a bank’ and ‘depositing funds into it’.

Ask yourself the following question. If your bank can freeze your money at any time, without warning and indefinitely, does that money belong to you?