Update 02/11/18: This has now been officially confirmed, with JCB sending out a letter to cardholders informing them that there card will be active until April 30th, 2018.
They are also offering a spending bonus or spend between January 1st and March 31st. Bonus is as follows:
- Spend $1,000 or more and receive $15 cash back points
- Spend $5,000 or more and receive $50 cash back points
A few days ago we posted that payment network and card issuer JCB were no longer accepting new credit card applications. Now according to Flyertalk user Magic Pickles senior management has dedicated to discontinue business in the USA, they plan to send out letters to current cardholders later this month informing them of this decision. They expect accounts to be deactivated by the end of April, 2018. JCB was interesting because they offered the following cards that offered up to 3% cash back:
We have reached out to JCB to confirm this information but are yet to hear back. I have little doubt it’s accurate, but something to keep in mind. It hasn’t been a good start to the year for cash back cards that earn at over 2% cash back, with the USAA Limitless also being discontinued.
Max out your JCB card and don’t pay the balance. JK.
It appears that cash back rewards above 2% on no-fee cards are not profitable for the banks.
Shhh. Don’t tell Bank of America. I want to keep getting 2.63% on my Travel Rewards as long as possible.
Same with the Premium Rewards card. It has become my go to everyday card. I love that card!
Since that award rate is not “open to the public,” you’re almost certainly fine.
PenFed Power Cash Visa Signature Card
• Sign up bonus: spend $1,500 within 90 days get $100 statement credit
• 1.5% cash back on everything
• 2% cash back on everything for all PenFed Honors Advantage members (this can be easily achieved by maintaining $500 in your checking account)
• Redemption starts at $5 or spend $250
• Cash back expires in 5 years
• APR 9.74% to 17.99%
• No annual fees
• No foreign transaction fees
Thank goodness for you, my precious.
Why jump through hoops for all than when Citi DoubleCash, Fidelity Visa, and PayPal MasterCard are all 2% cards? Citi also has amazing features such as price protection if you buy a lot of clothes.
No foreign transaction fee, no annual fee, so it’s worth the hoops
PayPal MasterCard doesn’t have foreign transaction fees either
haha. thats your standard for “worth the hoops”? u need to look at other cards brah…
I am befuddled, how is opening a savings and checking account and maintaining $500 in checking account in order to get 2% unlimited cash back on everything for the PenFed credit union power cash visa signature credit card such cumbersome hoops to jump through??
Took me 5 minutes to open an account with PenFed credit union, and less than 3 minutes to fill out credit card application for the PenFed credit union power cash visa signature credit card and less than 30 seconds to be approved for a $6,000 credit line.
I think people are referring to that specifically. Why are they going to open a checking account (regardless of how easy it is) and get 0.20% interest on their $500, when they could just leave that $500 in a higher interest account, just to get 2% CB? It’s locking up at minimum $500 just get 2%, when they could get that without looking it up.
This card fucks.
How So? Can you elaborate further?
Zduss really didn’t need to use the F-word, but the PayPal card also has no foreign transaction or annual fees and price and warranty protection. Not as familiar with the other two cards, but I hear Citi’s price protection benefits are less hassle. PenFed has better interest rates though.
the F word allows for better expression of ones feelings on the internet.
David. You’ve been plugging this card every chance you get. Do you work for them or something? LOL
Such an adorable sardonic retort there, Draven Ray!! I say thee nay to such the accusations of working for PenFed credit union. What’s there not to like about the PenFed credit union power cash visa signature credit card?
PenFed Power Cash Visa Signature Card
• Sign up bonus: spend $1,500 within 90 days get $100 statement credit
• 1.5% cash back on everything
• 2% cash back on everything for all PenFed Honors Advantage members (this can be easily achieved by maintaining $500 in your checking account)
• Redemption starts at $5 or spend $250
• Cash back expires in 5 years
• APR 9.74% to 17.99%
• No annual fees
• No foreign transaction fees
That’s just too obvious. This David guy doesn’t know what the readers are like on this site. He’s only using this site for advertisement purpose. $100 sign up bonus after spending $1500 this is already a joke. Citing no A/F, no F/T fee even makes me laugh louder.
Cutting losses on a failed experiment to grow a bit among the Japanese-American community.
Not surprised to see the Japanese credit card company getting out of business in the U.S. I don’t know if anyone here ever had the card with them. I once spoke with the CS there to follow up with my paper application 2 years ago. The Japanese lady over the phone had strong accent and it seems they don’t even hire any local people for their operations in U.S. How much do they know about the U.S. credit card markets and U.S. customers’ needs?
the card isn’t really targeted to American consumers, more so for those that shop at Maruka, Mitsuwa and Japanese / Asian consumers, so whether they hire American CS or not is not the issue. You probably aren’t their target audience if your going to complain about accents.
You are right I was never their target customer. I went to the Mitsuwa market in NJ a few times and I paid with AE. Their CC promoted that spending thousands dollars in store and get rewarded for a few dollars, something like that. So they entered the U.S. market to serve a few named supermarkets and a small group of people? With only paper application? How would they assist customers’ request/inquiry when their operation was run like that? They ran their business in a very old Japanese way I can tell. It makes perfect sense that they end up shutting down now. And even I don’t refer to their accents I wouldn’t be targeted anyway so I don’t understand how your “if” can be established.
I wonder if this affects the JCB/Discover partnership at all. Currently JCB cardholders from Japan can use them wherever Discover is accepted in the US, and Discover cardholders can use them wherever JCB is accepted in Japan.
Not too sure, I’ll reach out to Discover.
That’s not about JCB cards per se. That’s about the JCB network.
Discover is buying up more and more networks. They already owned the Diners Club network and the Union Pay network, so maybe they just added the JCB network. Networks are like Visa and MC, they are very different than banks, but a few banks used to have their own networks, and now Discover Network is buying them all up.
Longtime Diners Club cardholders in the US tend to have a clearer view of this than most. Diners Club card issued in the US long ago used to run on the Diners Club network, and thus there was limited acceptance outside of travel/etc. Then Citi moved Diners Club USA from the Diners Club network to the MasterCard network, and Diners Club USA stayed on the MasterCard network when it moved to BMO Harris. Diners Club cards outside of North America are still mostly on the Diners Club network however. Discover buying an integrating that network means that Discover cards are accepted by places overseas that accept Diners Club and Diners Club cards from overseas are accepted where Discover cards are accepted in the US (at least in theory, sometimes there are hiccups).
No. Discover does not “own” UnionPay. UnionPay is the largest card payment organization (including both credit and debit cards) in the world in terms of total transactions and number of cards, ahead of Visa and MC.
Discover does have a reciprocal agreement with UnionPay, it also has one with JCB. I don’t know if JCB pulling out of the US market will affect the agreement. My guess is it won’t.
UnionPay also has reciprocal agreements with a number of payment networks, including both Discover and JCB.
Yeah, UnionPay is the national payment network of China. I’m pretty sure Discover can’t own that.
> ” (at least in theory, sometimes there are hiccups).”
Totally – I got a JCB card years ago and didn’t use it much except when they were doing their spending challenges. During those months I’d try to maximize my cash refund, but it was very difficult to actually use the JCB even at retailers that accepted Discover. The reason was that the terminals frequently aren’t programmed to know that the 3566 prefix should be processed with Discover, since actual Discover cards start with 6. The terminals frequently would just say “card type not accepted.” It was embarrassing – sometimes I’d promise a clerk “Don’t worry, it will work because it processes like a Discover” and then be proven wrong!
So in light of this it’s not surprising that JCB is giving up on the US because with so few cardholders and such poor acceptance, they were in a real catch-22.
Not to mention that in 2018 JCB still isn’t offering online account access of any kind. That is what really blew my mind!
The FT link you provided goes to the wrong message. I think you meant to link the next message.
Affects all of 4 people. JCB was a very strange company
There goes my hopes for their eligibility to spread to the midwest. Oh well.
wow that came out of the left field!