In case you didn’t know, American Express will no longer issue the co-branded jetBlue credit cards. We predicted this at the end of 2014 and were the first to report that Barclaycard will be replacing American Express as the co-branded partner (this is still yet to be confirmed, but Barclaycard was hiring for a marketing manage for a jetBlue product and we have other information that confirms this).
When you apply for the American Express jetBlue credit card, you will now see a warning that states (emphasis mine):
IMPORTANT! American Express’ agreement with this co-brand partner expires on December 31, 2015. This means that if you apply and receive a card, it may be converted to a different card product around the end of 2015. The timing and terms of the new card product are not yet available. Please consider this as you proceed with your application.
The main news is that this partnership will end on December 31st. What’s also interesting is that American Express also states that this card might be converted to a different product near the end of 2015. The only problem is that American Express doesn’t state whether this will be one of their cards, or the jetBlue card issued by the new card issuing bank. We had a look at what might happen to existing jetBlue card holders in a previous post, here is what we concluded:
The American Express JetBlue card will be converted to the new Barclaycard product. This reasoning follows what I outlined above, but we also have an additional piece of data. Barclaycard had a job posting on Linkedin, the job title was “JetBlue Customer Marketing Barclaycard“. One of the things they would be responsible for is “Create activation strategy for new and converted accounts“. This is a pretty clear indication that Barclaycard will have access to existing American Express cardholders.
I’m still pretty confident in this prediction, but we will see what happens. Unfortunately it looks like we will need to have to wait until the end of 2015/early 2016 before we get to see the new product that will be offered by the new card issuer.
