Credit Cards

Category Archives for Credit Cards.

New Business Payment Solution TripActions Liquid Offers Rewards And Seamless Reporting

by Gary Leff

credit card wallet
Feb 25 2020

TripActions is a corporate travel management and booking tool that travelers seem to like a lot more than suffering through Concur. They’ve just announced their second product, which is a company credit card aimed at business travel and called Liquid. Companies using it in beta include Zoom, Lyft and letgo.

This isn’t a co-brand credit card, they’ve actually raised a $500 million debt facility to finance payments for the TripActions Liquid Visa themselves. This way they’re able to offer seamless integration between payments and travel without a bank getting in between booking, payments, reporting, and control.

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Here’s The Only Way The New Chase-United Credit Card Deal Makes Sense

by Gary Leff

united credit card
Feb 23 2020

I think I’ve figured out why Chase and Visa would agree to give United $400 million more a year – starting right away – for a credit card deal they already had in place for several years.

Much of United’s explanation why made no sense. This new deal isn’t likely to lead to a lot of “portfolio growth” (more cardmembers). They already were introducing new cards, new benefits, and have been running aggressive acquisition bonuses. However 5 words in United’s SEC filing seem to give away the plot.

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Barclays Launching An Emirates Credit Card In The U.S.

by Gary Leff

shower in plane
Feb 13 2020

Emirates offers a great product. They have some interesting airline partnerships. And they serve a number of U.S. gateways. To make a U.S. co-brand attractive they could take a lesson from the Chase British Airways card and offer a statement credit towards taxes and fees on redemptions each year, as well as offer fast mileage-earning and progress towards elite status along with upgrades on the airline.

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Visa Revamping Rates Charged To Merchants, May Affect Card Bonuses Some Banks Can Afford

by Gary Leff

credit cards
Feb 06 2020

Visa is adjusting merchant swipe fees across the board for the first time in a decade. The fees grocers charge will go down. Rates will also be lower for health-care, education and real estate, areas where Visa would like to win market share away from checks. Meanwhile the fee for online (‘card not present’) transactions will go up.

Banks want to bonus small dollar, frequent spend like groceries to get customers in the habit of using their cards, keeping them top of wallet for unbonused spend. The categories where this makes sense to banks though will change based on the revenue associated with each type of transaction.

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Special Restaurant Reservations For Chase Cardmembers

by Gary Leff

man cooking
Feb 02 2020

A year ago Capital One launched a relationship with dining reservations site Resy, setting aside tables at great restaurants for cardmembers. American Express went and acquired Resy and now American Express has a much weaker Resy partnership. Capital One quickly went out and partnered with OpenTable.

Yet somehow I didn’t even realize that before these things happened – a full 19 months ago – Chase launched a partnership with restaurant booking site Tock, which sells tickets to restaurants (top end restaurants with limited seating charge you in advance for pre fixe meals through the site).

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