Recently Barclaycard exited the market in Brazil and also in Africa, one of the reasons they exited these markets is they were capital restrained and wanted to expand in markets such as the U.S. & Germany. Amer Sajed was promoted to run Barclaycard in April and in an interview with Bloomberg stated that he wanted to expand in the U.S. & other markets.
It should come as no surprise that Barclay’s wants to expand it’s Barclaycard operation as it generates the highest return. In that interview, this quote was particularly interesting.
Sajed said he will use extra capital to invest in technology, attract customers and rebalance his division, which currently gets most of its revenue from interest on customer balances rather than interchange fees bank charge retailers when individuals make purchases with their cards
Hopefully Barclaycard plans to attract new customers with higher than normal sign up bonus, the fact that they will also be focusing on trying to increase their revenue from interchange fees should also mean that we see some more targeted spending bonuses and other initiatives to try to keep Barclaycard cards top of wallet (e.g additional bonus categories & removal of fees such as foreign transaction fees).
