AAdvantage Credit Card Issuer agreement updates
 

From what I understand AA's credit card issuer agreements with Citi and Barclays are coming up for renewal in 2022. I currently have an Aviator Red card.

Has anyone heard any news about this? Who besides Citi and Barclays have been vying for the contract? Will AA continue to use two issuers? Perhaps they will go with only one to save money. I hope they don't go with Chase.

Doubt chase could or would be interested.

no idea what is in store — nobody does other than prob the AAdv team who may may not have started any type of negotiations yet.

Let's hope they get rid of the BS exclusive agreement with Apple. No reason I should not be able to use my AA/Citi card with Google Pay.

Barclays allows use of Google Pay.

And if Barclays had a card that offered AC access, I'd be over there yesterday.

I wonder to what extent AA's unhappiness with Citi's loose marketing/terms/approval to people who were gaming the system will weigh in their partnership renewal decision.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...g-churn-2.html

I actually wonder if Wells Fargo will be vying for the contract. I know Wells Fargo plans on overhauling its credit card portfolio within the next year, and an agreement with AA would be a huge win for them. However since I already have two WF cards (Visa Signature and Propel Amex) approval may be more difficult.

Bank of America might be interested in offering a major airline's credit card (AS is very regionally focused, even if all FTers know how valuable their miles are).

AA and Citi have had a relationship for 30 years, my guess would be either that it's Citi exclusive or remains Citi and Barclays.

Some of the exclusivity is annoying e.g. Barclays can't offer lounge access or day passes. Hopefully the renegotiations increase the benefits offered, though historically airline credit cards have not offered super rich benefits.

Me too !

With that new Amex AA Business Extra card, they may just need to spice up the offering a bit so one never knows!

I'll second that !

Let's just hope that, whatever happens, the cards actually improve. The Citi Executive is one of the worst premium cards I've ever seen from an earn, rewards, and insurance perspective. Almost no benefits. Even the Chase and AMEX cards with lounge access offer travel and other credits that help offset the fees. That said, they've probably kept it this way because it's the only card that fulfills the function of automatic AC access. Now that it will also earn LP's, I can't really see any incentive for them to change it. Good business situation for them, I guess - they're able to deliver a product that people want without have to be competitive and actually offer much else other than the 2 things that make it worthwhile.

Is Wells in the cobranded card business? I get that they are changing up their product lines, but for whatever reason I don't see Wells making a purchase like this.

I personally think Barclays is the most likely suitor for the entire portfolio. They could offer a complete line of cards, including a premium card to compete with DL's AMEX Reserve or UA's premium offerings from Chase. Barclays loves cobranded cards and they already have the existing relationship with AA.

Though if AAdvantage is really becoming a bank... I wonder if they will try to partner with a full service bank that can offer checking/savings products alongside the credit cards. That makes Barclays a lot less of a serious player, but makes an agreement with someone like BoA with a nationwide footprint a little more interesting.

Thought I’d bump this thread since we’re about half way through 2022 at this point. There certainly hasn’t been any news on this front yet so we’ll have to wait and see.

My own speculation- I wonder if the limited time Citi Thank you point to AA transfer last fall was some sort of test Citi was doing to get certain data points, ahead of renegotiating their contract?

Why do you think AA cares? If Citi wants to buy billions of dollars of miles and give them out, I think AA would be happy to have the cash.

It could very well be that in the case of signup bonuses, AA and Citi were sharing that cost (ie, Citi was paying a discounted cost for those miles). After all, one of the purposes of a co-branded card is to encourage you to be a customer of the co-branded company (in this case, AA).

If that's the case and people churn cards then AA is not seeing any increased revenue from those customers, and so they could very well be losing money on them after providing the discounted miles.

I recently got a survey from Citi / AA about the Executive card. It was a comparison of a bunch of potential benefits, AF increases, and potential AU changes. My suspicion is that it's not related to the contract renegotiation though.

I suspect that AA would prefer to keep both card issuers, since presumably it thinks playing them against each other extracts the most money from the banks and from consumers that might have both banks' cards. Neither Citi nor Barclays strikes me as having the kind of drive and vision to pay a bunch of money to be the exclusive issuer (as Amex and to a lesser extent Chase seems to have).