Apple Savings customers hit with long delays when withdrawing money

Some Apple customers are facing multi-week delays when trying to withdraw money from their Apple Savings accounts, largely due to automated anti-money-laundering protections.

In April, Apple launched its new Apple Savings, a Goldman Sachs-backed savings account that allows customers to route Daily Cash rewards into a 4.15% high-yield savings account.

However, while it's relatively easy to add money to the savings account, removing it may not be nearly as easy.

Nathan Thacker had told The Wall Street Journal that he'd been trying to withdraw $1,700 from his Apple Savings account to his JPMorgan Chase account since May 15. However, upon calling Goldman Sach's customer service department, he was told that the money would be in his account in a few more days.

The money was finally posted to his account on June 1, more than two weeks after he initiated the transfer.

Thacker isn't the only one who has noticed issues, either. Some customers have said that upon initiating the transfer, the money seemingly vanishes — it does not show up in either their Apple account or the bank account they were trying to move it to.

Kevin Smyth, a man from Minnesota, had attempted to transfer $10,000 from his Apple account to a U.S. bank on May 16, WSJ learned. The money was flagged for security review, leaving it in limbo until the review was finished.

Goldman Sachs has gone on record saying that most customers do not see any delays. The ones that do, however, see them because of behind-the-scenes processes that have been put in place to protect customers' accounts.

New accounts, such as those opened by Apple Card owners, may trigger anti-money-laundering alerts. The transfers must then be manually approved. On average, these delays take about five days.

Delays maybe even longer for those who transfer money to an account that differs from the account the money originally came from.

Still, despite this, Apple Savings has done quite well for itself. The first week of Apple Savings proved Apple's ecosystem strength with more than 240,000 new accounts being created and nearly $1 billion in deposits being made.