Chase, United & Visa have agreed on terms for a multi year extension to their partnership on the Chase United MileagePlus credit cards. Chase has been the co-branded partner for United for the past twenty years and the current contract was due to expire next year.
It’s also expected that due to this extension that credit card holders that earn Chase UR points will be able to continue to transfer their points to United. In the press release there was no mention of any major changes coming to the Chase United cards, or additional cards being offered so it’s high unlikely there will be any significant changes to the credit card line up in the short term.
This was an important partnership for Chase to extend, United being their major airline partner along with Southwest. This is especially true considering they recently lost the Amtrak portfolio to Bank of America and BP to Synchrony earlier in the year.
The deal is also massive for United, last year they sold $2.9 billion in miles which makes up more than half of the ancillary revenue they generated. The majority of these miles were sold to Chase and other partners (e.g car rental agencies, dining programs etc). According to this SEC filling, United expects to make an additional $200 million in the second half of 2015 due to this new deal with Chase.
It’s also no surprise that Visa is the payment network that was included in this deal (this is usually decided by the card issuer, although the co-branded partner sometimes have some sway) due to the fact that Chase has a fixed cost deal in place with Visa.
Hat tip to PFdigest
KEEP CALM..and CHURN ON hehe