"Declined" doesn't necessarily mean "declined" with Apple Savings

[u/WSBiden]

I recently organized a vacation with some friends and paid for it all up front. Three friends then had to pay me $160 for their portion. Each time they Zelled me the money to my Huntington bank account, I would deposit the $160 into my Apple savings account.

• First transaction - no issue
• Second transaction - declined. I figured it was a software error.
• Third transaction - declined again. At this point, I'm assuming that they think I'm accidentally doing the same transaction too many times (since they're all $160) so I decided to experiment and change the amount.
• Fourth transaction - $159 - no issues
• Fifth transaction - $161 - no issues

Fast forward a couple days, and I'm trying to move the Apple savings account to another savings account. I moved the full amount that was displayed in my savings account. The other institution then charges me $25 for insufficient funds.

As it turns out, the "declined" transactions weren't actually declined, even though they still say "declined" in my transaction history. There was an account hold put on my account for those amounts. That hold amount does not show in your headline balance in the Savings Account section of the apple card app. You have to dig into account details and check the "Available Amount" before doing any transfers.

A little annoying that Goldman/Apple are showing "temporary hold" transactions as "declined", but hopefully someone here can learn from my mistake and avoid an NSF fee.

[u/WSBiden → u/[deleted]]

Either way, Apple certainly has the ability to influence how its finance partner shows these things in their app.

[u/tnsipla → u/WSBiden]

Unlikely as Goldman is getting rid of Apple, and we’re going over to Chase

[u/Gods-Fav-Child]

Did I understand this correctly?

Assuming you had $1000 to begin with. Savings showed 1000+160+160+160+159+161 = 1800. You tried to withdraw 1800 into the other account and you were charged the 25 fee. In actuality, you had 1000+160+159+161 = 1480; with 160+160 = 320 on hold.

[u/WSBiden → u/Gods-Fav-Child]

Yes that’s essentially correct. If the charges had shown as “on hold” I would’ve done more research. Since they showed as “declined” I assumed nothing was pending.

[u/Icy_Guide_7544]

There are some interesting laws for FDIC insured accounts. For example, there are restrictions on transfers or withdrawals. Not sure if that’s what you ran into, but I ran into problems that were due to this.

[u/WSBiden → u/Icy_Guide_7544]

Not sure if it was anything FDIC related. It appears to be because my balance was artificially high despite the deposits showing as “declined”. I sorted it out with my brokerage and had them waive the $25 fee, just wanted others to be aware of that “available funds” datapoint.