Apple had introduced the Apple Card, which is a new kind of credit card, but it is not made by a bank. The card started functioning in the U.S. in August 2019. It has only been three months, and it has started a controversy.
David Heinemeier Hansson has accused the algorithm of Apple Card’s credit limit of being sexist. David Hansson took to Twitter to address this problem. His accusation against Apple Card is that Hansson himself deserves 20 times the credit limit than his wife.
Moreover, his wife is not allowed to spend until the next billing cycle despite clearing all the dues in full and advance. He also revealed that he tried to fix the issue by making an appeal to the Apple authorities but to no avail. This case tells us of the Apple card’s gender discrimination.
He also mentioned in the tweet that calling customer support regarding this issue was useless since Apple customer support kept mentioning that the algorithm decides the credit limit of each person and that there is nothing they could do about it.
Apple Customer support assured Hansson that there is no discrimination going on on Apple’s part. Even Steve Wozniak faced the same problem. Whereas he did not fully dismiss Apple’s responsibility, in this case, he did mention that Goldman Sachs, the bank that partnered with Apple in this venture, should be blamed equally.
Our credit decisions are based on a customer’s creditworthiness and not on factors like gender, race, age, sexual orientation or any other basis prohibited by law – Goldman Sachs, the issuing bank partner for Apple Card
As one would expect, the thread went viral and many people started sharing the same problem. Taking the complaints into consideration, the New York Department of Financial Services decided to have look into the matter. It will investigate the algorithm responsible for this.
