Greece

• AAPL Company
• iCloud
• iTunes
• Apple Inc
• Cloud storage

Emergency banking controls prevent Greek customers from renewing their iCloud subscriptions, buying on iTunes/App Stores

Given the enormity of the financial meltdown in Greece, not being able to make iCloud or iTunes purchases is rather a long way down the list of the country’s problems – but for those with data stored on iCloud, not being able to renew a subscription could put that data at risk.

For those outside Europe who may not have seen too much news coverage, a combination of a long history of low levels of tax collection and the global financial crash has left Greece unable to pay its international debts. To prevent a collapse of the Greek banking system, the government has put strict controls in place, including maximum cash withdrawals of €60 ($66) a day – and a complete ban on overseas payments or transfers.

As payments from Greek subscribers are processed outside the country, this means that Apple cannot legally accept payments from anyone with a Greek account. One Bloomberg staffer learnt about this very directly when they received an email from Apple telling them their iCloud renewal had failed.

“On June 30, we tried to charge your account for your iCloud space of 20GB, but there is a problem with your payment details,” said one e-mail received by Bloomberg News staff based in Athens. “If we don’t manage to renew your subscription, your account will be downgraded to the free 5GB space program.”

Via Business Insider

• AAPL Company
• iPad
• European Union
• Bonds
• Greece

How 100 iPads helped close the deal on Greece’s debt crisis

Bob Apfel, the founder of Bondholder Communications Group, told Fortune this morning that he completed the debt restructuring of Greece a couple of weeks ago with the help of an iPad. Well, 100 of them—to be exact.

Greece looked at bankruptcy head-on just a few months ago, but it found mercy through a round of restructuring transactions where the country settled for a smaller percentage of the its bonds’ paper value. Thousands of bondholders needed to first give the go-ahead, but such an endeavor, as Fortune coined it, was a “logistical nightmare.”

At that point, Apfel said he bought 100 iPads equipped with a customized app for debt-restructuring. His team of financial wizards received the tablets and immediately met with investors and other money gurus across the European Union. Of course, the iOS tablet successfully helped Apfel and his firm to close the deal that shrunk Greece’s debt to a more manageable sum.

According to Fortune:

• Toward the end, things got pretty exciting.
• ‘I watched hundreds of millions of bonds being ‘slam dunked’ as these guys were running down the halls,’ says Apfel. ‘Split-second decisions were made that couldn’t have been made without the data platform.’
• When last deal finally closed on April 25, $270 billion of Greek debt had been reduced to $130 billion.
• ‘It was the largest financial transaction in the history of the world,’ says Apfel. ‘And we couldn’t have done it without the iPad.’

 

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