MONEY
son fumed, until he went public with his complaint.
Apple then gave his wife the “VIP bump” to match
his credit limit, with no further questions asked.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was among the
many who replied to Hansson’s tweets, saying he’d
had a similar experience. He’d gotten 10 times the
credit limit on his Apple Card as his wife had re-
ceived, he said, even though “we have no separate
bank or credit card accounts or any separate as-
sets.” The resulting Twitter blow-up even prompted
the New York Department of Financial Services to
open an investigation to determine whether any
state laws had been violated. In an appearance on
CNBC’s Squawk Box, Linda Lacewell, the agency’s
superintendent, said, “States have got to be there
to make sure that these kinds of discriminatory
policies are not being tolerated.”
Goldman Sachs, in turn, quickly denied any
wrongdoing, releasing a statement on Twitter
pointing to the individual nature of its credit ap-
proval process and saying, “We have not and will
not make decisions based on factors like gender.”
But many on social media took the company to
task for not giving the complaint more meaningful
consideration. As one tweeter put it in a direct reply
to the company, “‘We don’t believe there is discrimi-
nation in our algorithm, but we will investigate this
serious matter’ would serve you better than pushing
this horse uphill behind a cart-type tweet.”
How This Legitimately Might Happen
what largely got lost in the heated online
discussions: In common practice, the factors that
Hansson and Wozniak mentioned as reasons that
their wives should have gotten higher credit limits
are not among the factors that credit card issuers
typically use to determine creditworthiness. “Fil-
ing jointly on your taxes doesn’t matter and you
generally don’t list your assets or net worth on an
application either,” says Schulz. “For the most part,
it’s about income, spending habits and credit his-
tory. That is, it’s more about what you’re bringing
in than what you have or how much you’re worth.”
A wife who is primarily a homemaker or who earns
a lot less than her husband and lists only her own in-
come on a card application may end up with a much
lower credit limit even if she has an excellent credit
score, Schulz says. A number of the negative Apple
Card tweets alluded to this scenario as an example
of how the algorithm might inadvertently discrim-
inate against women, who are more likely to make
less money or not work outside the home than men.
But under a rule change from the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau in 2013, spouses can
include their partner’s income when applying for
a credit card so that this inadvertent bias doesn’t
FIRST BITE
The initial tweet that
sparked the controversy
(below) has since been
retweeted nearly 10,000
times. A potentially even
bigger issue: The lack of
transparency among all
issuers about the factors
they use to determine
creditworthiness—that is,
the algorithms on which
their house of cards is built.
“EIGHT OUT OF 10 CARDHOLDERS WHO ASKED FOR A HIGHER CREDIT LIMIT IN
THE PAST YEAR WERE SUCCESSFUL, WITH AN AVERAGE INCREASE OF $1,500.”
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