The old Amex for Target prepaid card is on the chopping block, as Amex just sent out an email indicating that it will be discontinued on March 21, 2016. [This is not REDbird, rather an old prepaid card that hasn’t gotten much attention recently due to its fees.]
Apparently, they are taking a serious look at their overall system and adjusting accordingly, including:
- Nerfing AFT
- Shutting down around half of their Serve/Bluebird account holders
- Laying off 124 workers who work in the Serve department
Amex is also offering a $25 bonus for new Serve accounts, as noted in the email. We’ll cover that in a separate post.
HT: @voyagingdoc
View Comments (6)
Amex is clearly on a mission.
I get what you're saying in light of the recent Serve/BB shutdowns, but I think this move only makes business sense. You could no longer load the AFT with Credit or Debit. It was nothing more than a RedBird with more fees, more restrictions, and fewer benefits. Add in the fact that AFT doesn't run on the Serve platform and AMEX is likely needlessly spending money by continuing to support this platform.
"Shutting down around half of their Serve/Bluebird account holders"
Is that "around half" just wild speculation or is there some source for the number of accounts shut down?
Sort of speculation, but also based off some polls I saw. I didn't really run the numbers though. Maybe I'll take a better look now.
Those would be polls of MSers/Churners, though, right? I doubt the readers of blogs such as this (and FT, etc) make up even close to half of all Serve accounts.
If they did, AMEX would more likely be closing Serve down entirely rather than continually adding new flavors and closing down (possibly half of) the churners.
Correct.
Legit users outnumber MS 10:1 at minimum.