Originally Posted by
Dr Jabadski
You answered the question yourself: the opposite of what we optimizers and/or churners do. Carry a balance (so Chase profits on finance fees), miss or delay payments occasionally (so Chase profits on those fees), apply for 1 card once every 25 years (0 or 1 SUB), use that 1 card for all and high spend (no category bonuses), definitely not a customer who takes advantage of various benefits.
While all of these things do make a customer profitable to Chase (or any bank), one becomes an unprofitable customer if one does not eventually pay all those balances.
If you aren't that customer, you can still be a solid customer by utilizing other bank services (deposit accounts, investments, swipe fee volume, etc). That is the premise of programs like BoA's Preferred Rewards, US Bank's Smartly, etc. The bank probably won't make as much money off you as they would someone who pays them a lot of interest (and eventually pays them back), but they need the other type of customer to mitigate risk, so they're willing to make less on them in the process.
Banks and casinos share a lot more in common then one side would like to admit. The house (almost) always wins.