Cardless issues several interesting rewards cards, like TAP Air Portugal, Avianca LifeMiles, and Qatar Airways Privilege Club. The especially like the benefits of the Qatar card which comes with status that gets you lounge access – and even business class Flagship lounge access – when traveling on American Airlines domestic flights and the Avianca card which has some great award discounts.
QSuites NextGen, Credit: Qatar Airways
I haven’t been eligible for any of these travel cards! Cardless got its start with sports team cards, and it made sense to limit a customer to just one card. The thinking goes that a customer would be a super fan of a single team, and if they were getting multiple cardless cards it probably wasn’t their dedication to the brand as much as a bonus or other strategic play they were after.
But the company grew into travel cards, and customers regularly carry more than one. I had an early Cardless product (that’s been discontinued!) but the one card lifetime rule shut me out.
Last year they told me they would be eliminating this rule, since it no longer made sense for their business. They have finally done so as first reported by Travel On Points.
DFW Flagship Lounge
So if you’ve had a Cardless product in the past, you can consider getting another one! Or if you’ve been holding off on one worried that you might like something better that comes along later, this may assuage that worry. In its place, they share the following application rules:
The application must be 60 days after your most recent card approval.
The application must be 45 days after a recent card decline.
You can only have one card per brand.
You cannot already have the same card.
All more than reasonable!
That one-card rule was odd.
As to the AA lounge access angle here, it is wild how stingy AA is. Like, you can be Executive Platinum, but not even get into an Admirals Club (unless you’re in Flagship First or Business, or on international, transcon, or those specific Hawaii routes, or have the Citi Exec card); yet, you can get QR Gold (OW Sapphore) via this ‘premium’ Cardless card, and you get into all Admirals Clubs and Flagship lounges, even when in domestic economy. Insane.
If that’s the case, then it’s quite the loophole. I suppose they think most people won’t pull this off, so it doesn’t really affect capacity. Of course, you wouldn’t get into Chelsea or Soho at JFK T8, because those are ‘special’ joint-premium with BA; there, you’d need to actually fly long-haul for Chelsea, but at least with Concierge Key, on mere domestic routes, you could get into Soho. How needlessly complicated.
UA is similar – the loophole is to earn status with a non-US Star Alliance airline with the presumption that since you are “out of market” when flying US domestic.
Gary can you confirm that the one card rule was in part because the founder was a card and points maximizer himself and didn’t want to attract this type of behavior with THEIR cards.
And this comes about a month after all of their sports cards have been discontinued. Just last week my ManU card auto deleted from my Apple Wallet.