Originally Posted by
JALPak
I haven't received such email yet. But the FAQ states this as well. Looks like the "enhancement" only applies to card with $35 base annual fee, and the $20 fee one will continue to pay for the 3% fee. But both are business Mastercard branded as JAL USA CARD per se.
https://www.jalusacard.com/en/faq/
Reached out to the bank that issued the card and the CSR doesn't have any clue either as it's only launched today. They will need to research on the matter and will provide an answer tomorrow.
What makes it worse is the 5000 bonus won't apply for existing cardholders that apply for this new card. Well....guess I will continue to use my Amex for foreign transactions
Existing cardholders get a 15000 miles welcome bonus compared to 10000 for new applicants (so in some way, you do get a 5000 bonus). Of course, 15000 isn't a very generous welcome bonus compared to other US credit card programs.
Originally Posted by
izzik
So, I applied for the new JAL US Card online. The web application asks for more information than what is typical for US credit card applications, such as employer and salary. It also asks for SSN of course, which I provided. The next day, I see that FNBO did a hard pull on my credit file.
About 2 weeks later, I received a letter in the mail asking for the following documents to be mailed to a PO Box in Nebraska:
- Copy of Driver's License
- Copy of Social Sec card
- Copy of last 2 yrs of W-2s
It says that my application cannot be processed without it.
In my opinion, this is a dealbreaker. Sharing hard copies of those documents to a random PO Box is nuts.. practically asking for your identity to be stolen. Not to mention FNBO already has all the relevant information from the credit pull. Calling FNBO did not change anything, so I am ignoring the letter... expecting the application to be rejected. If this is what it takes to get a JAL USA Card, I am NOT interested.
I think the target audience of this card is people who have recently moved to US with little to no credit, so they ask for more documentation and are able to give a higher credit line. When I first moved to the US two years back and had absolutely no credit, they accepted copies of my previous salary information and gave me a very high credit line (I also applied a BoA credit card and got only a very small credit limit). It helped a lot back then, just so I can have a card to spend a higher amount with, and to build credit. However, I don't recall that I have to mail them any documents - all the documents were uploaded through an online portal. I did have to call the Customer Support and verify some information over phone.
What is really annoying this time is that they require an entirely new application to be submitted for the "new" card. It's strange how they cannot make it a product change. The silver lining is that there is a new (not great, but better than nothing) welcome bonus. I'm also debating whether to reapply since I now have good US credit and do not need to depend on it anymore.
If anyone had reapplied (from originally holding the card) I would be interested to hear the experience and whether they required a lot of documents again (or they have those on file from the first application). Thanks!