Category Archives for Credit Cards.
Log into your American Express account and scroll down, there’s a new ‘Amex Offer’ that appears to be widely available that many cardmembers can opt into by adding it to the card account of their choosing: $50 back when you spend $200 or more with Marriott by September 21.
During the American Express second quarter earnings call, CEO Stephen Squeri offered a number of insights into their credit card business and travel benefits.
The company is seeing lower rewards expenses because the highest cost rewards are usually travel rewards, and that’s not how people are spending their points. There’s also less usage of travel-related benefits. I was surprise though that Delta, Marriott, and Hilton cards have been outperforming other American Express cards.
The New York State passed a bill that would require banks to give consumers 90 days to use their credit card rewards points if their account is closed either by the consumer or the bank.
15% rebate on a purchase of $100 or more from United, up to a maximum of $57 back (which means maxing out with a $380 purchase).
American Express conjured up a holiday, Small Business Saturday, in a pique of marketing brilliance. They wanted to promote card acceptance with small merchants in a drive to reach parity with Visa and Mastercard, and promote awareness among their own cardmembers that Amex is accepted at small businesses.
American Express has a new small business promotion now – an ‘Amex Offer’ you can add to one personal card that will give you a $5 rebate on up to 10 purchases of $10 or more (total $50) at eligible small businesses.
Lenders are putting up $5 billion against United’s MileagePlus. They have a huge interest in making sure the currency remains as attractive – or becomes even more attractive – to program members, to assure the revenue stream needed to pay back the loans.
Yet credit card companies have had ‘anti-devaluation’ clauses in their co-brand agreements for years and it hasn’t done any good. Here’s why.
The Home2 Suites by Hilton at the Kansas City airport adds 3% to customer bills for ‘credit card processing’ though apparently when pushed they’ll remove the fee.
The truth is that it’s cheaper to accept credit cards than other payment methods, and it’s an underhanded tactic no different than a resort fee to impose a hidden add-on on customers. Why should a customer have to cover a business’s cost to accept their money, on top of the cost of the product they’re buying?
The Uber Visa is no longer mentioned in the Uber app and the application has been removed from the Barclays website. If you go to the Barclays page for current Uber Visa cardmembers and choose ‘not a current cardmember’ you’re taken to a page’s expired,
Here’s the deal.
Never sell your miles, never lie on a credit application (that’s a crime, though only the main perpetrators are charged here), and look skeptically at people contacting you to participate in schemes, there were even multiple assumed names apparently being used here.
The indictment by the way tells us how much a bank was paying airlines for frequent flyer miles…
It’s important to define who you are, and tell that to your customers. It’s also important to tell that to your employees, so they know how to make decisions inside the company.
Apple can focus on creative types, empowering them to pursue their missions and dreams. Nike can celebrate great athletes. Very few companies have been able to create a clear purpose that customers associate the way American Express has. Without that brand American Express might as well be Discover.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
