How Apple Card Leverages Consumer Behavior Insights

When Apple Card launched, Apple pushed Goldman to make the product as accessible as possible. The goal was to avoid alienating potential customers “simply” due to their lower credit scores. Apple even launched a “Path to Apple Card” which is a program to walk with applicants who previously got denied.

When Apple Card launched, people with checkered credit histories were being approved. This raised eyebrows in the financial sector.

Because Goldman and Apple targeted the Apple Card towards the general consumer, regardless of income bracket, there was large mainstream interest in Apple Card. Social media intelligence from Infegy Atlas detected that the Intent emotion made up 46% of users posts when discussing Apple Card. This suggested that a wide user base was keen on applying for it.

That intent converted into card signups. Apple Card is now Goldman’s largest consumer credit product and makes up a majority of their consumer credit accounts. It is now one of the largest growing sectors of their business.

Many of these card applicants did not have the requisite credit scores, but were accepted anyway. Infegy Atlas detected a surge of posts around people boasting about being accepted as an Apple Card borrower, despite lying on their application. Posts show them boasting about their new found spending power or talking about how they were going to use the card responsibly.

Our consumer intelligence platform aggregated hundreds of thousands of these initial posts to show that our Risk indicator rose 486% from May 2022 through August 2022. Risk could indicate a borrower’s lack of ability to pay off a card or increased danger around that credit product.

Infegy Atlas aggregated most popular hashtags associated with Apple Card. We found that a large percentage of hashtags related to terms like #creditrepair, #fixyourcredit, or #creditrestoration. This suggests that the applicant that is posting about the Apple Card is likely to have issues with their credit, and thus be a less than prime applicant for a bank.

These factors have conflated and resulted in a 200% higher default rate for Goldman’s Apple Card, when compared to other similar credit products. As per CNBC’s reporting, these rates are troubling, especially concerning the economic uncertainty in the country with high inflation and rising interest rates. As interest rates continue to rise, debt-laden consumers will feel more pressure.