Is it possible for a credit card to be sexist?
That was the allegation that some were making against Apple’s new Apple Card credit card after some men and their wives both signed up for Apple Card, and the husbands found that their credit limits on the card were many times higher than their wives.
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Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank that supports Apple Card, came out to deny any claims that it was deliberately giving women less credit than men when they applied for the digital credit card simply because they are women. Goldman Sachs tweeted that, “your account is individual to you, your credit line is yours, and you establish your own, direct credit history.”
Goldman Sachs then added, “In all cases, we have not, and will not make decisions based on factors like gender.”
https://twitter.com/gsbanksupport/status/1193703266003177472
The brouhaha over the Apple Card started over the weekend when David Heinemeier Hansson, a technology engineer and entrepreneur, tweeted that he was given an Apple Card line of credit that he claimed was 20 times higher than that of the one his wife received. Hansson argued that the algorithm used in the credit-application process was biased against female card applicants.
“Apple Card is a sexist program,” Hansson tweeted. “It’s doesn’t matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate.”
No less than Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added his voice to the matter not long after Hansson made his claims. Wozniak replied to Hansson’s message saying a similar occurrence happened when he and his wife applied for the Apple Card.
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. But 10x on the Apple Card.
— Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) November 10, 2019
“The same thing happened to us,” Wozniak tweeted. “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. But (my credit limit was) 10x higher on the Apple Card.”
In its response, Goldman Sachs said that with the Apple Card, like any other credit card, “each application is evaluated independently” and that because of such evaluations, “it is possible for two family members to receive significantly different credit decisions.”
Apple didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the matter.
