Category Archives for Credit Cards.
American Express still sees headroom to charge customers more, and make them feel o.k. with it by selling access to their cardmembers to adjacent brands in exchange for coupons and discounts. That strategy will work until they reach some theoretical limit – but they haven’t found it yet. As long as they keep promising you a somewhat better experience in aspirational portions of your life like travel, you will keep paying and keep spending on their cards.
Bilt Rewards has launched a new travel portal and it promises to fix everything customers hate about travel portals. In fact, it aims to actually make travel better and easier. At a minimum, they’re building along the right lines. And their new ‘Home Away From Home’ brings luxury travel benefits like Amex’s Fine Hotels and Resorts to their members without requiring an expensive credit card.
The relaunched Chase Sapphire Reserve is now available. Those applying today get the new card value proposition right away. Here’s what I really think about the new card – as a standalone proposition, and about the changes for current Sapphire cardmembers. Should you get the card? Should you keep it?
Bilt Rewards confirmed their new valuation of over $10 billion – specifically $10.75 billion – based on a $250 million fundraising round meant to fuel expansion beyond apartment rent and into homeownership.
And they also shared big news: that they will be leaving Wells Fargo for Cardless.
Skeptics of the program have little reason not to participate. If you think they’re providing too much value to be sustainable, that would seem to be an even stronger reason to go all-in with the program (to benefit from the excess value they’re delivering).
Here’s a CEO who spent 1.83 million American Express Membership Rewards points to cover a surprise tariff bill at the guitar pedal manufactuing company he runs in Oklahoma Cty.
The product was wildly successful attracting young, affluent cardmembers. But it wasn’t profitable. Early on Chase filed SEC 8-Ks outlining greater than expected costs. My understanding is that in the first five years after launch they’d cumulatively lost around $2 billion on the product.
Chase is revamping its Sapphire Reserve card. It’ll be more expensive, and the earning and redemption proposition will be different. There are a lot more credits than before. So what’s the next effect on cardmembers – are the changes to Sapphire Reserve good or bad?
Delta and American Express are working on a new premium credit card, positioned as higher-end than their current premium Delta Reserve card that comes with lounge access.
It seemed worth pulling out separately things like ‘what happens to my existing Sapphire Reserve points?’ and ‘when does this change actually go into effect for existing customers?’ And perhaps even more importantly, ‘is there a brief window for me to choose whether I like the old or new product better?’
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 »
