Would you trust a financial product backed by Apple, based on Apple’s reputation alone? Early in 2019, tech blogger David Gewirtz wrote a piece about the new “Apple Card”—a sleek, titanium credit card connected to the iPhone. After pointing out several usability challenges, he then moved on to his biggest worry: Financial transactions using the Apple Card would be managed by the financial services company Goldman Sachs.

In launching the Apple Card, Apple is seeking to compete in the credit card market by reducing the friction in retail transactions. It’s trying to make transactions simpler, faster, and more convenient because consumers like convenience. The biggest source of friction in commerce, however, is lack of trust: The less we trust our trading partners, the more we (and they) must invest in costly monitoring and enforcement mechanisms in order to do business. As those costs rise, fewer marginal transactions can be executed profitably. That makes trustworthiness perhaps the most significant asset a business firm or a business person can have. The more trustworthy you are, the more marginal business transactions you can make profitable for yourself and your trading partners. Trust is the foundation that a capitalist market is built upon