Accor is closing its French Visa cards, so don’t expect to see one here

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• tw33ty says:

  8 May8 May 04:47

  BNP parabis, another messed up loyalty credit card that they botched up and was unprofitable.

  Guess it’s a running trend with them!

• QFFlyer says:

  8 May8 May 05:11

  They’ve (ALL) partnered with NAB here to introduce an ALL earning card – it’s essentially NAB rewards with ALL autoconvert switched on by default, but since ALL wasn’t a NAB partner before, it’s at least another option. SUB is ok, but I’d take the equivalent in NAB Rewards points and throw them into Velocity instead, personally.

  • QFFlyer says:

    8 May8 May 05:17

    I should add, ALL has a fairly large footprint in Australia, much more so than IHG, Hilton, Marriott, so I would guess its loyalty program is fairly popular – with Accor Plus too being a draw (paid but you can easily make the cost back).

    Annual fees are more commonplace/tolerated than the UK market and the 0.8% interchange cap vs 0.3% probably helps (when that came in it did hit the market, but not nearly as hard as the UK market when theirs came in).

• mattnav_travel says:

  8 May8 May 06:48

  I used to have this card until I cancelled it a few months ago but yeah it was definitely a bit of a pain to make use of given that they didn’t allow customers to upgrade from the pulse card to anything higher. You were forced to cancel and reapply because BNP bases their decision on your profile from the point when you first applied. If you had better credit now that didn’t matter to them, you were still ineligible for higher tier cards. It was a weird and very dumb system

• Brussel Sprout says:

  8 May8 May 06:55

  Wasn’t this card more like a curve card than a credit card? Credit cards don’t seem to have much market presence in France – far higher proportion of debit cards in use

• ukpolak says:

  8 May8 May 07:00

  I lived in France (albeit 20 years ago!) for a while and IIRC the attitudes towards credit cards were vastly different to back here in the UK, even then.

  I think I recall having to pay SocGen for a regular current / checking account which came with a debit card (free here of course), and then there was another fee if I wanted to change the bank-provided 4-digit PIN to one of my own choosing.

  I wonder the extent decisions like this are driven by the local market attitude to FS products like this overall, ie they’re on a sticky wicket right from the get go.

  • RussellH says:

    8 May8 May 10:54

    I had an HSBC France current a/c for around 15 years (opened in the 1990s when they were Crédit Commercial de France, closed around 2012/13 – since sold off by HSBC and, I think, back under the original name).
    No fee for running the a/c as far as I recall, but €32,– per year for the Carte Bleu (Visa Debit) card

• BJ says:

  8 May8 May 07:03

  I read yesterday that Qatar Airways has launched cards in the USA. Any chance we will see something from them here?

  • Rob says:

    8 May8 May 07:35

    Nothing has been signed, put it like that. The Cardless deal went from first meeting to launch in 8 weeks or so, apparently, and when you get a decent fintech involved things can be done quickly.

    • BJ says:

      8 May8 May 12:33

      Thanks Rob, despite amex MR cards becoming de facto QA cards an altermative would still be welcome.

  • Tom says:

    10 May10 May 13:35

    The new qatar cards are not a great deal. You can find reviews of them on various US points sites. Any UK card would be inferior most likely.

• Nate1309 says:

  8 May8 May 07:26

  Any news of a new Hilton card Rob/Rhys? The one in the US seems really popular (interchange fees… I know). Still have my trusty barclaycard one but want to get the barclaycard Avios card.

  • memesweeper says:

    8 May8 May 08:21

    I guess the first “news” we’ll get on that will be from Barclaycard when they announce the end of the Hilton Visa for existing cardholders. Can’t very well have two on the market.

    After many happy years of use I’m closing mine next month and sitting things out with Barclays for six months. Barclaycard Avios is too good a deal.

    • Peter K says:

      8 May8 May 13:19

      I look at this from the flip side. The gold status from the Hilton Barclaycard saves me money every year. For example I stayed at the Fellows House Curio in Cambridge this year for a week.
      This saved £20x2x7 = £280 on this one stay alone.
      I know I could get gold status via Amex platinum, but this is going the way of no partial refunds soon it seems.
      That ongoing actual money in my pocket keeps me with the Hilton Barclaycard for now.

• Susan says:

  8 May8 May 07:39

  Live in France and might have been interested. As others have noted the culture here is much more debit card – and many debit cards have an annual fee as do most current accounts.

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