We have Chase back in the news again, doing some stuff. They’re also tweaking a Marriott card. We have, of course, Wells Fargo coming out with some new cards with Expedia. And we also have the old-school OG-built card in the news.
The gist is that Chase will no longer allow credit cards to be used for Buy Now, Pay Later programs. So, this was an account message courtesy of Travel with Grant here. Effective October 10th, 2024, you cannot use a Chase credit card to pay for third-party Buy Now, Pay Later, or BNPL for short installment plans.
Payments to these installment plans, Klarma, After pay, et cetera, are the ones we’ve talked about for a while. Honestly, I didn’t know these services would have taken credit cards before, let alone that Chase would have let them through.
We’ve seen a long war on, you know, not being able to use cards to pay for debt, which is not a new thing. So, Chase also pushes their own Buy Now, Pay Later plans using their card near existing credit limits.
So, I don’t know. It’s not overly surprising. I’m more surprised that you could still use it before. So, this one is not a terrible loss overall. Again, most people here are using Buy Now, Pay Later, but if you know someone who is, well, make them aware of it.
Chase Threatens Fee
Now, changing number two for Chase because they’re just going to keep going today is interesting. So, if you remember back to, I don’t know, a few months ago when there was a war on late fees or late payment fees, you know, where the, I think it was the CFPB wanted to move them down to about $8 from, you know, $30 to $40, whatever the banks were charging. Well, of course, the banks weren’t a fan of that.
As a result, now, Chase is at least putting their chest out there saying that as a result of this, a lot of consumers could see their checking account fees increase or their free accounts go away, which is odd because I don’t know if they understand what a free account is over the house of diamond, but here you go, let’s take a look at the quote.
Now, we pulled this from Yahoo Finance. It was originally reported to the Wall Street Journal, but if you’re new here, I’m not paying for the Wall Street Journal.
The interesting part is, again, I don’t know if J.P. Morgan understands what a free account is. They have one free account, free without requirements to keep it free, and that’s their student or college checking. Funny enough, my account is still registered as a college checking.
Even if you don’t product change it up to whatever their next one is, they still have the fee requirement. There are other total rewards you’d think I’d know, which we talk about all the time for the bonuses on the second channel. Still, their main consumer banking accounts are free with requirements, either a $1,500 minimum balance or reoccurring direct deposit, so yes, they’re free. Unlike a credit union, we see many free checking products through these bank accounts.
So, I don’t know if they’re threatening to take away that, and they think they will be as bold to think people will pay them $5, $10 a month for the right to have a checking account at J.P. Morgan. I don’t know. Would other banks follow suit? Probably. Someone’s got to go first. We’ll see how this goes. It’s a veiled threat to get it out there to the world right now.
They would probably just put fees on their accounts, which are unavoidable for checking accounts. That seems tough. Generally, you want to encourage people to bring money under management and use your account. So, I don’t know. The wealth management side makes more sense.
People aren’t afraid to charge for wealth management products, but even over there, how far can you push people when you have your pick of wealth management? And by wealth management, we mean a brokerage account for the average person, right? It can be for your daily trading activities, retirement account, or whatever. So, you’ve got the fan favorites of Charles Schwab.
That is the best one. Fidelity is also usually a popular one if you want some legacy names. But then you’ve got Robinhood, which, again, we talked about the gold card, but I liked Robinhood for trading when I used it. Let’s not get started on Webull and Moomoo’s free stocks by now. So, it is a tough sell that even Chase would do this to see how far they can push their customers.
Now, the fees are, you know, the $8 fees aren’t going to go over well, and the bank will recoup their money somewhere. I do not doubt that. We’re declaring more on checking accounts and deposit accounts, though. A stretch given like that’s the one product that gets people in the door.
It’s hard, sure, but I think that would irk many people. But then it would be interesting to see how far you can push people. One thing we do badly as customers is they know they can push us around, and not enough people will leave, like Wells Fargo.
They were still the largest, second, or third-largest bank at the time, going through everything they had gone through a few years back. So, they could try it and see, but it’s just a threat right now, putting your chest out there.
Marriott Bold
It’s not all bad from the Land of Diamond because they are taking a minor refresh to the Marriott Bold card. So I’ll put it on screen for you, but this is like the junior card, the baby brother card from the Marriott lineup, and Chase. So again, minor refresh, still no annual fee, multipliers.
From what I can remember, you’re losing out on travel, but their course 3X Marriott was already there. They’re adding groceries at 2BAC, ride shares at 2BAC, select food delivery at 2BAC, cable and phone services at 2BAC, and one-on-one everything else. They’re dropping Silver Elite.
You get Silver Elite status, but the Knights used to get 15 Elite Knight credits. It would help you towards status. They didn’t count as stays, dropping it from 15 to 5.
So, back to our first story, it’s like buying out pay later just for travel, which you could still buy now pay later on those cards, but it’s a cool branding. So whatever, you know, much ado. It’s not anything anyone here is going to care about.
You can see what they’re defending against. Marriott looks at its portfolios as if no one is using this card. Let’s add a bunch of other multipliers that people could use every day daily. And so for people who just wanted one entry-level travel card and they are Marriott points, it’s fine. Most people here are going to be bothered about it. You’d rather have the double cash.
I’m sure you put that spending elsewhere and get it to Marriott. Double cash is a bad example, but you get the point. I think they’re cutting the 15 Elite Night credits because there’s a world where people hang on to this card, leave it in a desk drawer, and keep it active to bank those credits.
If you’re going for lifetime ambassador elite or something, having this card to get 15 of those elite nights per year is pretty good. So I can see that as well. They want to make it less advantageous, and realistically, those elite night credits aren’t going to do anything for any serious customer with this card.
You should have another one by now. So just be aware of that. Now, a higher intro offer is also being offered. So, we’ve got it over for you at Propfulcontent.com in the blog post.
They’ve got 2,000, 50,000 points, and I’ll put it on screen for you. But they’re also throwing in an elite night credit. But again, I still don’t think that one’s worth it, but at least they are throwing some points behind it.
BILT Beta
We talked quite a bit about Bill Rewards and Wells Fargo. Bill Rewards was originally with Evolve Bank, and we talked about Evolve Bank last week for nothing good, a data breach, unrelated, but maybe related. Eventually, Bill signed with Wells Fargo, and normally, what happens is that you would move and take the entire portfolio of customers and loans with you to the new issue.
It doesn’t have to happen that way. When Capital One and Walmart are going to break up, Walmart will leave the entire portfolio. So, it’s not uncommon to do, but running two products simultaneously is uncommon. There was the Wells Fargo-built card, which we’ve discussed. There’s also the Evolve Bank-built card, which I didn’t know was a thing.
his is important because of the Evolve Bank version, which they’re now calling the beta-built card, which is creative. hey’re going to sunset that product at the end of this year. So specifically, here you have it. Here’s what’s going on. This is from Miles to Memory, who got it.
I could have sworn they said beta in here somewhere. Maybe I made that up. But so there you go. I didn’t know they were running two portfolios side by side. Why? So why would they not bring the portfolio with them? Well, there could be several reasons. I guess it’s an underwriting and customer base issue. Normally, if you’re going to look at a portfolio, you get to sign some documents, and then you can have your analyst review the portfolio.
The portfolio is the group of customers, their vitals being FICO’s incomes, all that good stuff, right? See what you’re paying for if you want them. And often with these cards, when they go to NEO and Fintech banks, or banks like a Synchrony or someone like that, they cast a wide net because they want approvals, right?
This is uncommon; even Chase casts a wide net with the Amazon cards, you know, because Amazon doesn’t care, right? It’s not Amazon’s money. Amazon wants the customer, right? So it’s entirely possible that, you know, these are not customers that Wells Fargo wants, especially since, granted, we don’t have a lot of Wells Fargo data points, but from the Signify and the Journey card, we’ve seen a lot of denials.
I got denied for both, and he said, hey, too many inquiries. They hit me for four things on my denial letter for the Journey. Of course, there is normally no intro offer for the built card. So they offer them 10,000 points regardless of approval, which is nice.
So, if you have a card with Evolve that works for you, apply for it. Again, remember Wells Fargo’s rules. It’s once every six months for a Wells Fargo card bonus, which could impact some people. I’d not burn a card full of 10,000 points.
It’s also possible that all banks had their set of issues with data breaches and other issues. So maybe Wells Fargo says from a risk perspective, like we’re all good, let alone the fact that Wells Fargo, again, we talked about it like a month ago now, maybe is still losing money on the built card, 10 million a month, rumored or allegedly.
So, we’re all set on customers while we sort this out. We won’t tell you, no, but we’re not going to give me everyone you got. Those would be my theories. I don’t know. I didn’t realize they were running two programs like that.
Expedia Cards
if you are a legacy card holder, let us know what you will do, and I’d love to get your opinion on it. Wells Fargo is not done yet. If you don’t want the built cards, consider their Expedia cards. We talked about the built story.
We said Wells would pause on new partnerships and co-branded ventures except for the one Expedia because it was already in the works. They have released a press release, and we have the cards. We got a lot of details, which is very nice and appreciated. So we take a look at this. You’ve got two. So, one key on the right is the no annual fee.
Earn 1.5% on one key cash on all other purchases. Okay, an automatic silver tier path next to your unlock gold will be available when you spend $15,000. Probably better ways to spend $15,000, but you let me know. No foreign transaction fees are nice.
Cell phone protection, trip protection, cancellation and eruption, auto collision damage, and common carrier. Also, there are additional MasterCard worldly benefits, the standard stuff you would expect. Big brother card, one key plus. At least they didn’t say Platinum.
A lot of this is the same. I’m spot-checking to see what’s different. 3% back one key cash on Expedia. The same deal applies. You’re getting three back at gas stations and groceries, two back in one key cash on everything else. That’s in the gold tier.
Those are your bigger differences. The next tier is Platinum. We found the Platinum word when you spend 30 grand per calendar month. Again, probably per year, sorry. An easier way to spend 30 grand. Get 100 bucks in one key cash on each cardholder anniversary and receive a statement credit of up to $100 with global entry.
That’ll go up to match the raise fees coming in October. No foreign transaction fees and the same deal. I’ll leave that up briefly so you can look through it. But, you know, I don’t know. I mean, look, Expedia’s popular with the common man, all right? So, I’m not going to bash these.
It’s fine to have products that are directed at the common person. If you like Expedia, you’re probably not doing super well with travel cards like people would here. Sure. I don’t even know what Expedia codes are, to be honest. I don’t know if it codes as travel or not.
But for those people, you know, sure. They’ll probably be happy with it. I don’t know what one key cash is worth. No. Most of you don’t even care. If you do, let me know down below. This is fine, even the $199 annual fee. Suppose it’s one cent per point, then, you know, that $100 one key cash each cardholder anniversary.
Again, it’s paying for itself. So, if you like Expedia and are booking through it, that’s fine. That’s fine. The cards will be available later this summer. They didn’t give an exact date. We’ve got the full presser and overall profitable content for you. It’s probably late summer or early fall because we’re halfway through summer.
My thought is that not everything has to be for us. There’s not going to be of interest to most people here. But Expedia has a large following. Those people could be happy with this, especially because the annual fee card looks on paper to pay for itself with that $100 every anniversary year and a $99 annual fee.
You could be fine. Again, the status is that I don’t know what those get you at hotels, but overall, new products are always good. And again, it’s still nice to see Wells Fargo not shaking too much and still in the new product game.
