Credit Cards

Category Archives for Credit Cards.

Citi’s Newest Transfer Partner – Aeromexico – Is Absolutely Useless

aeromexico plane
Oct 21 2019

Club Premier is 49% owned by Aimia, the company that spun off Air Canada’s Aeroplan, lost 80% of its market value when Air Canada announced its intention to start a competing program, and then sold the program back to the airline. Aimia has the demonstrated capability to run a good operation. In this case however they are part of one of the worst frequent flyer programs.

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New: 25% Bonus on American Express Points Transfers to Air France KLM

klm planes
Oct 21 2019

American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 25% bonus on transfers to Air France KLM Flying Blue through November 30. You’ll need to log into your American Express account to see the bonus (otherwise it’ll show with the standard 1:1 transfer ratio).

I find that Air France’s availability and award pricing is very attractive for US-Europe flying.

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The Four Favorite Cards in My Wallet

credit cards
Oct 16 2019

There are four credit cards in my wallet that I like the most for purchases. That’s out of a couple of dozen cards total. I want to earn miles as quickly as possible. I also want to jumpstart my elite status and have access to the best airport lounges.

So these are the four cards I’m playing with most right now.

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What’s Fueling the Credit Card Rewards War – and What Could Bring it to a Halt

credit cards
Oct 04 2019

The economics of co-brand credit cards used to favor banks much more than airlines, though they’ve been lucrative for the airlines for years. By the time of United Airlines’ bankruptcy in 2002 the airline in some sense continued flying to support the underlying credit card business.

With banks spending more on their co-brand partnerships and more to reward consumers they’ve gone looking for ways to trim costs.

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Goldman Sachs Spent $300 Million Developing the New Apple Card. Then Apple Claimed They Built It.

iphone 5s
Sep 30 2019

Developing the Apple Card turned out to be a huge drain on Goldman‘s IT resources: Goldman Sachs spent $300 million “to build it” and “[w]hen early testing of the software this spring revealed a security vulnerability, Goldman reassigned thousands of engineers from around the firm to patch it, people familiar with the matter said.”

Yet somehow Apple’s line on the product is “Designed by Apple, not a bank.”

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Huge Changes to Delta American Express Cards, and New Limited Time Offers in October

Sep 30 2019

American Express is increasing earn on some cards, adding new benefits, and taking away others while increasing annual fees for new cardmembers (and at renewal for existing cardmembers).

New perks will include access to Centurion lounges for Reserve cardmembers. The re-launch of benefits and earn will happen effective January 30, 2020 and the limited time offer will run October 1 – 30, 2019.

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Barclays Will Focus More on Co-Brand Cards, Expect New Mileage-Earning Products

credit cards
Sep 28 2019

Barclays is moving away from issuing its own cards and acquiring its own consumer financial services customers, and focusing more heavily on co-brand relationships like their deal with American Airlines. As they work to grow on the back of co-brands, they need both more partnerships and to market those partnerships more aggressively. And they need to introduce new products to sell to their co-brand customers.

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