Originally Posted by
cordelli
I can't possibly see their acceptance becoming limited. Visa and Mastercard rely on the fact that if a card her their logo on it, it's accepted by all their merchants. They would never allow a merchant to have a chart showing which Visa cards they take and don't take, nor could the merchant charge different amounts based on which Visa was presented
Apparently, that is exactly what the settlement with the Gov. is going to permit. The famous (or infamous, depending on your position) "honor all cards" rule is going to disappear.
This may mean that bonus cards will become harder to everywhere, charges to merchants will go down for bonus cards to keep them accepting the cards, annual card fees may go up on bonus cards, or some of all of the above, or something else may happen.
Right now, too early to tell, although there is some speculation that banks have so many miles to hand out that they already bought that bonuses may go up for a bit. Hence, e.g., Citi's 75 to 100K mile recent bonus offers on AA cards.
Keep tuned to FT.