Apple is the marvelous, wonderfully deceitful company that is now apparently teaching those deceitful big Wall Street Banks a lesson.
One would have never guess it. It's about money, deception and those you choose to partner with in your pursuit of it.
Forget Netflix or that new South Korean hottest of the hot series taking over the media universe.
Nothing more entraining than a big squabble between two giant bulling money-grubbing corporate behemoths.
What's that saying? One....
"Banks rushed to work with the Apple Pay mobile wallet when it debuted in 2014. They have some regrets.
When Apple Pay launched, the tech giant got big banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Capital One Financial Corp. COF -0.50% and Bank of America Corp. to agree to pay fees that would allow their cardholders to pay by iPhone. But some banks have grown unhappy with the costs, especially after Apple Inc. AAPL 0.63% introduced its own new credit card in 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some banks are pushing back, nudging card network Visa Inc. V 0.99% to change the way it processes certain Apple Pay transactions, according to some of the people. The change would trim the fees that banks pay to Apple.
Visa plans to implement the change next year, according to people familiar with the matter and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Apple executives have told Visa executives they oppose the change, the people said. The two companies are in discussions and it is possible the planned change won’t kick in.
Currently, banks pay Apple a fee when their cardholders use Apple Pay. Under the planned new process, the fees wouldn’t apply on automatic recurring payments such as gym memberships and streaming services.
The dispute reflects a long-running tension between the giants of tech and finance. Companies such as Apple and Amazon.com Inc. have been expanding in consumer payments for years. The banks have often rushed into deals with them, afraid of being left behind. But the deals don’t always work out: Alphabet Inc.’s Google, for instance, is abandoning plans to pitch bank accounts to users.
"Apple said in a statement that “our banking partners are an important part of Apple Pay’s growth.”
“Our bank partners continue to see the benefits of providing Apple Pay and invest in new ways to implement and promote Apple Pay to their customers for secure and private in-store and online purchases,” the company said.
"Major networks including Visa and Mastercard Inc. are the effective gateways between banks and Apple Pay, because they help banks’ cards get loaded onto the mobile wallet. The change would apply to Visa-branded cards, though other networks could follow suit." WSJ
With interest rates near zero and the rates consumers are paying on their credit cards should tell you how much politicians right and left really care about you and their corporate friends.
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Will someone please tell the Fed.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand—New Zealand largely kept out Covid-19 by closing to the outside world, a policy accompanied by stimulus to keep the economy moving. Now the resulting labor shortages and surging demand, notably for housing, have led it to become one of the first developed economies to raise interest rates since the pandemic began.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand lifted its benchmark rate to 0.5% from a record-low 0.25% and signaled more increases over the next year, as it seeks to tame inflation stoked by higher oil prices, rising transport costs and supply-chain disruptions.
"It said the increase would also drive up mortgage rates and so help cool house prices, up about 30% over the past year. The policy challenges are different than when the pandemic began, the central bank said.
“Demand shortfalls are less of an issue than the economy hitting capacity constraints given the effectiveness of government support and resilience of household and business balance sheets,” the RBNZ said. Source.
It also highlighted a risk that some capacity bottlenecks might persist now that the South Pacific nation is ending its effort to eliminate the coronavirus locally."
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