Yesterday I made some predictions about the Chase Hyatt card and I made some other predictions back at the end of 2014 for 2015. I thought I’d provide some more predictions today, in some cases I’ll go into some depth about why I think something will happen and in others I’ll just make the prediction. I’m looking forward to seeing what my batting average is down the line.
As always, keep in mind these are only predictions and speculation. Chances are I am 100% wrong about all of these, this is more of a mental exercise for me than anything else and I always learn a lot from readers after posting these types of posts.
- Chase Amtrak. This card will come back running on the Visa network rather than the Mastercard payment network it previously ran on. Miles remaining also predicted this. Chase is slowly shifting all of their MasterCard’s to Visa’ (IHG is the other main partner with Mastercard and they shifted from Visa in 2014 which is against the grain, but keep in mind the co branded partner has some say when it comes to these agreements as well). The reason this is happening is simple, Charlie Scharf (current CEO of Visa) used to work at J.P Morgan Chase as the CEO of Retail Financial Services. In early 2013, Chase signed a deal with Visa that involved Chase shifting more spending over to the Visa payment network. As Chase’s contracts with co-branded partners have come up for renewal, they have slowly been shifting them over to Visa. Chase Amtrak becoming a Visa card is simply a continuation of that. You can read more about this on the Chichago Tribune “Chase replaces more MasterCards, discontinues Blink“.
- Chase IHG. As mentioned above the Chase IHG card with MasterCard. I’m predicting that Chase will issue multiple different tiers of this card with different card benefits. This is based on two facts:
- American Express Personal Platinum will add new benefits. These should be released pretty soon, won’t say too much more.
- American Express will move to a once per lifetime bonus for American Express business cards. This has already occurred with personal cards. Business cards typically have a much higher average spend per cardholder than personal cards, as such it’s easier to recoup the cost of the sign up bonus through interchange fees for the card issuer. The downside is that business accounts are less likely to pay interest/fees than consumer cards. Not overly confident on this prediction and I hope it’s wrong.
- Barclaycard American Airlines will be available for new sign ups after the merger. I’ve heard a bit of chatter about this (they are new sources so not sure how much faith to put into it) and I don’t think Barclaycard’s strategy to offer four different cards makes a lot of sense unless they are able to issue these cards.
Do you have any predictions for what will happen to these products? Do you have any other predictions/information you’d like to share? If so, let me know in the comments.
I just wish that Amex would let one have more than four credit cards.
Being capped at four takes the fun out of it.
It’s not the fact that charge cards must be paid in the same cycle that irks me, it’s the fact that virtually al Amex charge cards have annual fees.
I like predictions, because it enables us to see your train of thought and where you’re coming from
I think I’ll make a dedicated page with all of the predictions and then list if I was right/wrong as well. Always fun to look back on them.
Sounds good!
that’d be an awesome addition to this already dope site. look forward to this dedicated page. going forward, it’ll be great to look back over the years to see changes and predictions and premonitions come true or not. I think our M&P hobby is poised for a lotta changes (whether good or bad). a lot has already happened in the last 2 yrs but I feel a lot more is coming our way in the near future as well.
interesting view about Amex biz cards once a life time limit… why do you think they haven’t done so already? or at the same time as personal cards?