vh_bu98

I've had my Discover Card for probably over 20 years now...it may have been my first card when I was in college. It was useful when I was a Sam's Club member since that was the only card they took. I like how they now do 5% quarterly bonuses like the Chase Freedom and it's really the only time I use it.

Superorb

Yes, but the quarterly categories is limited to only $1,500 in spend.

Can we get both cards at the same time?

EmailKid

Sears sold Discover card eons ago.

jags86

Discover requires you to have a card for 1 year before they will approve you for a second.

Superorb

Of the same card or any 2nd card from them?

sdsearch

There is no "any" 2nd card. As mentioned above, they only have 2 types of cards (Discover IT with 1% normal cashback and 5% rotating categories, and Discover IT Miles with 1.5% normal cashback), and they've only had that a year or two (before that they had only 1 type of card).

And I don't even know if they allow you to get a second of the same card. So the one year wait mentioned above was between getting one of those two cards and getting the other. Once you'v got both, end of story.

Superorb

Alright, thanks.

sdsearch

Well, to be complete, it turns out they have at least one more card in the USA, but it's for special credit circumstances only, as evidenced by its name: Discover IT Secured.

And they have affiliates in other countries which may offer cards under other names.

So to rephrase more correctly, they only issue 2 cards in the USA for people with good credit.

EmailKid

While I didn't use it in China, it seems like it was widely accepted. Is it via UnionPay, or is there something else there as well?

tmiw

Discover goes over UnionPay in China per https://www.discover.com/credit-card...ional-use.html. However, it's definitely a YMMV thing as I've heard of people having issues with chipped Discover cards there and not being allowed to fall back to swiping.

AllieKat

According to @jamar this has got far worse lately. Fundamentally banning fallback is good, but not if the AID isn't supported.

sdsearch

Using the card is totally different the getting the card.

In addition to issuing cards, Discover operates a worldwide card processing network (or set of networks) which includes Discover, Union Pay, and Diners Club. But that does not necessarily mean that Discover issues any of those other cards anywhere. While each card runs on a particular network, the banks that issue cards and the networks that process the payments are most often separate, though they are the same in the case of Discover's own cards and the Discover network, and in the case of Amex-the-bank's cards and the Amex network.

The two most famous card processing networks, MasterCard and Visa, don't issue cards at all. Cards that run on their networks are all from partner financial institutions. But when you get to the smaller networks (such as Discover/Union Pay/Diners Club), the relationship between card processing networks and the issuers of cards becomes more muddy.

Discover, Union Pay, and Diners Club used to be separate networks, and then they merged. But that merger seems to have had "growing pains", and that would explain why cards from any of those networks aren't always consistently accepted on all of those networks everywhere even though in theory they should be.

(Note: Diners Club cards issued in USA/Canada run on the Master Card network, not on the Diners Club network.)

reclusive46

Which just shows that the terminals themselves aren't even properly programmed. As if the terminal doesn't support the AID on the chip, it shouldn't be processing as fallback in the first place.

AllieKat

Discover doesn't operate UnionPay, the Chinese government does. They just have a mutual acceptance agreement. How well it works varies.

Discover and Diners can have interoperability (routing) issues in magstripe world, but rarely in chip world as the application is the same.

reclusive46

Why they didn't just give Diners Club and Discover cards the same bin-range I'll never know.