American Express will be the sole issuer of Hilton cards in 2018, Citi has sold their portfolio of cardholders to American Express and will even end transfers to Hilton in mid December of this year. Citi has traditionally partnered with one major partner in each sector (American for airlines, Hilton for hotels) that’s a good way of ensuring you’re not competing with yourself and also keeping your co-branded partners happy. I’ve long said that I’d love an AirBnB co-branded credit card and even made a push for an American Express AirBnB card in early 2016.
One of the reasons industry insiders gave me on why a card doesn’t exist is that hotel chains have too much leverage in the space and creating a co-branded card with AirBnB would create too many complications for those card issuers with these hotel chain partnerships. Now that Citi has parted ways with Hilton, now is the perfect time for them to partner with AirBnB. AirBnB doesn’t have a loyalty program, but they have partnered with airlines to offer miles for stays. Uber also doesn’t have a rewards program and they have successfully launched a new card with Barclaycard.
Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach recently stated that: “We shifted our focus away from rewards because of the competitive heat”. The advantage of partnering with a brand such as AirBnB is that there should be considerably less competitive heat when it comes securing the partnership and it’s not directly comparable to other hotel cards.
