Last year I didn’t make any predictions, I think I was too lazy. This year I’m trying to be more pro-active (and I got jealous reading about other sites looking back at their predictions) so I thought I’d share some of my predictions for 2017. Most of these are related to credit cards as that’s what I feel most comfortable predicting.
My Predictions
Bank of America To Add New Rule
Chase has the 5/24 rule, Citibank has 1/24 family rule & American Express has the once per lifetime rule. Bank of America must be experiencing a big flux of credit card applications in the last six – twelve months. Eventually they are going to realize a lot of those applications are extremely unprofitable customers and add some type of rule to deal with them.
Mobile Payments To Add Loyalty Programs & Increase Competition
Mobile payments are still relatively new, but another year means more and more people will have upgraded phones that are compatible. Last year saw almost everybody try to launch some sort of mobile payment platform (Chase Pay, Walmart Pay, Android Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay etc etc etc). This year will see those different platforms compete with each other for market share.
Samsung have already been aggressive in this, with the launch of their rewards program. I think we will see Android & Apple following suit this year and in addition card issuers will be offering more individual promotions for adding/using your card on the different platforms.
Additional Benefits To American Express Platinum
I think American Express will add additional benefits to their personal & business Platinum cards, most likely in Q1 of 2016. I’ve heard rumors of such a change, but not specifics and nothing is guaranteed. I originally thought they would have made changes to the airline credit, but given we are already a few days into 2017 without any changes I’m not sure that will be the case anymore.
Regardless of what they add, I don’t think the card will be competitive when compared to the Chase Sapphire Reserve unless you highly value centurion lounge access.
American Express Will Cut Back On AmEx Offers ‘Abuses’
AmEx offers can be insanely profitable if you get the right offer on enough cards. I suspect American Express will spend some time and resources trying to make ‘enhancements’ to their offers platform to discourage things like automatic Twitter enrollment and using the same offer across multiple cards.
New Premium Chase Business Card
With the success of the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the addition of the Chase Ink Preferred last year I think we will see Chase add a premium business credit card to compete with American Express’ Business Platinum card. Chase Ink Reserve anybody?
Chase To Restrict Bank Account Bonuses
Currently Chase allows you to churn their bank account bonuses (one per calendar year and not within 90 days of a closed account). I think they will restrict this further.
Other Sites Predictions
I’ll also list other sites that have made predictions here, that way you can easily see how they are doing as well.
If you’d like to be added to this list, please let me know in the comments (and it never hurts to link back to our predictions either – but not required). I’d also like to know what you think will happen in 2017, please share your own predictions in the comments below and later in the year we will see if you did better than me or not ;).
