Category Archives for Credit Cards.
American AAdvantage has two banks issuing credit cards to members in the U.S.: Citibank and Barclays. Citibank advertises online, through direct mail, and in American’s club lounges. Barclays advertises in the airport (but not within 100 feet of a club) and on flights.
The Barclays small business card is still new and hasn’t ever offered 50,000 miles before though I imagine after this offer ends we’ll eventually see it back.
Later this month Chase will be adding a new card to the Ink family, that seems more the equivalent of the Freedom Unlimited, offering 1.5 points per dollar on all spend.
I don’t believe that Chase will ever make money on its Sapphire Reserve product. They’re effectively spending all of the interchange on rewards and benefits, and any margin must be coming from customers paying an APR — but with the high income, high credit, and high assets Chase reports about Sapphire Reserve cardmembers you’d expect even that to be a smaller group of customers than usual.
So it’s not surprising that we see the bank looking for cost savings.
American Airlines and Citibank announced that their co-brand credit card will be increasing earning and also that a bigger signup bonus is coming next month.
There’s been a great deal of confusion among readers about new Marriott breakfast benefits. Marriott will be offering Platinums and above breakfast at 23 of their 30 brands, and they’ve eliminated the exclusion of breakfast at resorts from the program.
Here’s what that means in practice.
As a short hand expectation many people figured that would mean that applications for the Starwood Amex product – the one I’ve had for 17 years – would cease August 1. American Express, though, says “the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Consumer card will continue to welcome new Card Members now through August 2018, and beyond.”
Many people believe that means the card will continue to be offered indefinitely. I’m quite certain this is not the case.
After laying out the details of the new unified Marrott loyalty program I covered the new credit cards that will be offered.
One opportunity emerges.
Plastiq will usually charge 2.5% to bill your credit card and send a check to make payments for you.
I love competition, though. Because now that there’s a new player on the scene Plastiq is out with a lower rate promotion to lock in rent payments.
Marriott did a deal with both Chase and American Express for credit cards. Chase gets the bulk of the personal business, but American Express gets to issue a premium personal card. American Express gets the small business cards. And cardmembers keep their legacy products.
Both banks are issuing new products, and making changes to existing card products too. So in addition to speaking with Marriott about the changes I reached out to Chase and American Express as well to learn more and they were both forthcoming.
Urbanr lets you pay rent by credit card. They charge the tenant’s card, and the landord receives payment electronically in 3-5 business days.
And at 1.5% you’ve got a worthwhile margin even with a 2% cash back card though you can do better than that. Plus they’re offering $10.
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 »
