Originally Posted by
chicagorich
I imagine Cap1 is buying Discover so it can eventually field its own payment network and pull the Cap1 cards off of the Visa and Mastercard networks. I guess the Mastercard logo on my Savor card will get replaced with a Discover logo eventually.
It does seem like Cap1 wants to be more Amex-like (see also the VentureX etc.) and I've seen it reported that Discover has a much bigger prime/superprime tilt than Cap1 (or even Citi or Chase, though not as much as Amex) in its loan books. It's a plausible hypothesis that having a network makes it a lot easier to make money off cardholders who pay in full.
So I'd expect the Ventures and Savors to shift to the Discover network, while the less-prime cards from Cap1 stay Visa/MC.