10 Developments in Recent Credit Card Launches

Over the past six months, EMI has monitored new credit card launches by leading issuers and identified 10 trends.

  1. Issuers are moving away from long-duration introductory rates on purchases and balance transfers (BTs), in particular on travel cards.
  2. A basic earn rate of more than 1% (or 1 mile/point per dollar) is common.
  3. Most cards are offering a higher earn rate for spending in specific categories.
  4. Issuers are not competing aggressively on APR.
  5. The two new affluent cards are metal.
  6. Many cards continue to promote acquisition-and-activation bonus offers
    • Three premium cards (with annual fees) all offered 50,000 bonus points.
    • Three other cards (with no annual fees) promoted bonus offers of 10,000 miles or $100.
  7. In a significant departure from the previous norm, two new no-annual-fee airline cards have been launched
  8. For higher-end cards with annual fees, the robust travel benefits are emphasized over the rewards program as the core justification for the fees.
  9. No foreign transaction (FT) fees on travel cards is now becoming a standard feature.
    • American Express remains an outlier, by continuing to apply a 2.7% FT fee on its travel cards.
  10. Most issuers continue to apply BT fees.