American Express retains the British Airways credit card contract

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• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  27 Mar27 March 04:55

  I wonder if this means the bmi MBNA cards will be disappearing soon as it sounds like they now no longer have any reason to exist.

  I am glad the BA card remains a proper Amex though, I have been stung with the fact additional cards on MBNA carry the same number. When the additional cardholder had to cancel their cards due to theft it put my cards out of action too. You also with MBNA can’t have a breakdown of who spent what.

• David says:

  27 Mar27 March 06:00

  Disappointing news about Spain. The key benefits of holding the Spanish Iberia Sendo cards were a) the availability of a Visa card in addition to Amex, b) two annual half price point purchase promotions (self and gift) lasting about one week normally followed by c) half price redemption promotions on IB metal during a window of about six weeks. These were holdovers from the pre IAG takeover and effectively allowed redemptions at 25% of normal cost on purchased points. Since the IAG takeover, though, premium cabin availability was significantly reduced. I hoped that would be improved by the latest changes leading to programme spin-off. Without the point purchase/redemption opportunities of the old business model, the programme is going to be far less attractive to me.

• JK says:

  27 Mar27 March 07:24

  The Delta deal was renewed for 7 years. Stephen Squeri said this:

  “when we signed a deal
  with Delta, it is a cobrand deal extension for seven years, it’s a card
  acceptance deal, it’s a membership rewards, it’s a consumer travel and it’s a
  business travel working with the joint venture. BA was exactly the same
  thing. That’s a remarkable partnership. And we were committed to creating
  value together and grow faster as a result of our renewed partnership, and
  that that’s going to be partnership is all about and we feel great about
  that, and our list of partners are expanding.”

  I have no idea if that means the BA deal was extended for 7 years too, but sounds like it. I’m sure I read 3 years, but maybe that was with Starwood.

  Also one other headline:
  “*AMEX SAYS MORE COBRANDS IN HOTEL, RETAIL INDUSTRY COMING UP”

  Have the transcript of the meeting now. Will send it over.

• mark2 says:

  27 Mar27 March 08:57

  Great news now that the 241 is more valuable after the Avios devaluation.

• Martin says:

  27 Mar27 March 09:15

  Despite the devaluation of Avios this still remains a very good deal.

• andystock says:

  27 Mar27 March 09:46

  Amex also have a small operation in Ireland for when Aer Lingus becomes part of IAG.

• simon s says:

  27 Mar27 March 10:46

  I wish we would get some new players in the points credit card field – wish Barclays had a decent offering like they do in the US, would love more opportunities to really play the points game. I get to spend nearly 150k with work spend and its really annoying that I have to do it all with Amex.

• joe says:

  27 Mar27 March 12:26

  Barclaycard has a Spanish business. I think it is pretty big.

  • David says:

    27 Mar27 March 19:14

    Indeed, plenty of Barclaycard customers in Spain. Given that Barclaycard operated at an arms length business from Barclays other operations, I expect they still have those customers in Spain. They won’t have sold them on to Caxia with the sale of their retail banking business. (Barclaycard unit was the introduced card provider across barclays different banking units, in the UK and abroad).

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