Last month, Apple AAPL launched its new Apple Card savings account. It offers an attractive interest rate and allows users to move seamlessly between the savings account and credit card while using their iPhone. But is it the right option for consumers?Last month, Apple AAPL launched its new Apple Card savings account. It offers an attractive interest rate and allows users to move seamlessly between the savings account and credit card while using their iPhone.
Variable interest rates for the Apple Card range from 15.74% to 26.74% based on creditworthiness, Apple said. That’s broadly in line with the average credit-card interest rate, which is now at 23.84%, the highest since LendingTree began tracking rates monthly in 2019. While not everyone is comfortable with the idea of handing Apple their financial information, said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, Generation Z and millennials might feel differently. “They grew up with this sort of tracking and data,” he said.
For Apple Card users who sign up for the savings account, cash rewards automatically go into the savings account and start earning interest. It is “very seamless” and could be helpful to savers, Tumin said, but users have to be careful about overspending, especially those users who sign up for the card specifically to get the savings rewards.
The good news: The U.S. personal savings rate also hit $1 trillion in March, up from $915.8 billion in February. This is a turnaround from late last year, when the personal savings rate fell to its lowest level since the Great Recession and to the eighth-lowest quarterly rate on record . The personal savings rate hit 3.3% in the third quarter.