American Express’ Hilton Honors Card will be re-engineered as the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card come January 2018, meeting Chase in the market with a $450 fee. Successful card design dosent come cheap. Amex had to acquire Citi’s interest in a competitiing program, which gave Citi a $150 pretax gain from the sale.
Things are starting to percolate at the Amex tower.
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AmEx will also debut a small-business card as part of the expanded deal with Hilton. The card comes with a $95 annual fee and will give customers 12 points per dollar at Hilton properties and 6 points per dollar spent on gas, shipping costs, select flights and wireless phone services.
Hang on to your hat. We’ve started to hear some anecdotal feed back on surging attrition rates at Chase from the sticker shock of Sapphire’s $450 renewal fee. Will Amex fill the migration void? Will it help protect Amex’s top end franchise? It might, but there will be challenges to this premium market and paying big money for a commodity purchase may not be sustainable.
Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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