Apple and its partner Goldman Sachs have found themselves at the centre of allegations about Apple Card discriminating women.
New York’s Department of Financial Services (DFS) has contacted Goldman Sachs, which runs Apple Card, after several people pointed out that the credit card seemed to give men higher limits than women.
The matter was first brought to the attention of the public by David Heinemeier Hansson, founder of Ruby on Rails, the programming tool, who noted that his limit was 20 times higher than that of his wife, despite her having a better credit score.
Once he tweeted about it, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, replied on Twitter, “The same thing happened to us. We have no separate bank accounts or credit cards or assets of any kind. We both have the same high limits on our cards, including our AmEx Centurion card.”
However, on Apple Card, Wozniak said he had a limit ten times that of his wife.
DFS is now investigating the accusations.
Goldman Sachs has issued a statement on the matter, denying the sexism claims. “We wanted to address some recent questions regarding the Apple Card credit decisions,” Andrew Williams, a spokesperson, said in the statement.
“With Apple Card, your account is individual to you; your credit line is yours and you establish your own direct credit history. Customers do not share a credit line under the account or a family member or another person by getting a supplemental card.
“As with any other individual credit card, your application is evaluated independently. We look at an individual’s income and an individual’s creditworthiness, which includes factors like personal credit scores, how much debt you have and how that debt has been managed. Based on these factors, it is possible for two family members to receive significantly different credit decisions.
“In all cases, we have not and will not make decisions based on factors like gender. Finally, we hear frequently from our customers that they would like to share their Apple Card with other members of their families. We are looking to enable this in the future.”
Apple Card was released in August. Since then, Goldman Sachs has extended credit lines worth $10bn to Apple Card users since Apple launched the credit card in the last quarter.
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