Originally Posted by
Strawboy1230
Meanwhile other banks like Chase are absolutely crushing it.
Where's the evidence? American Express is now the #2 credit card network by transaction volume in the USA, having passed MasterCard. If they were being "crushed" how could they accomplish this?
Chase hired away a couple of executives from American Express. A market share battle ensued, and consumers benefited. This phase ended, and the issuers became more interested in margin than in raw numbers of accounts. We are well past the peak new account offers, and we saw higher new account spend requirements and more emphasis on features such as no foreign transaction fees, EMV chips, automatic year-end bonuses, etc.
Now American Express is apparently trying to consolidate their position and reduce account turnover. This will only work if the other large issuers follow. In a diverse market someone is always hungry. If it is Chase or Citi I think American Express will have trouble making this stick, but if they adopt similar policies I don't think Bank of America, Barclays, CapitalOne or Wells Fargo have sufficient footprint (in the rewards card category) to ignite another market share battle anytime soon.