They certainly are not elevating their fleet.

I doubt it’s a card since people overseas received the email.

Email received. It is a card.

It's a lot of hype for a new card. Much more than when they released the SCB Asia Miles card.

Makes me wonder what other perks they are attaching to it, how it is integrated with your MPC status maybe or perhaps it is a premium card (Visa Infinite?).

Dear Mr,
When the new Cathay co-branded credit card arrives, you’ll have the key to unlocking a whole new world of privileges – where every spend, tap or swipe brings you closer to long-awaited trips.
This will be the only range of cards in Hong Kong that offers exclusive Cathay travel and lifestyle privileges - and more closely reflects your status, on the ground and in the air.
So get ready. A whole new experience is arriving in July.
Yours sincerely,
Marco Polo Club

Dear Mr,
When the new Cathay co-branded credit card arrives, you’ll have the key to unlocking a whole new world of privileges – where every spend, tap or swipe brings you closer to long-awaited trips.
This will be the only range of cards in Hong Kong that offers exclusive Cathay travel and lifestyle privileges - and more closely reflects your status, on the ground and in the air.
So get ready. A whole new experience is arriving in July.
Yours sincerely,
Asia Miles Team

Possible issuers:
- HSBC (rumoured)
- CCB (they just terminated their HX card)

"More closely reflects your status" - makes me think it could be a credit card that also indicates your membership level (green card or gold card etc), given they also just stopped issuing annual MPC cards. This would be one way to "integrate" your Cathay status with living and spending.

The SCB AM card can still be applied for on the website. If a new card is arriving in July, would be a very short notice for those people that just apple for a AM card now. As they say it will be the only Cathay Card, does it mean the bank might still be SCB? Just a revamped line-up maybe.

If it is HSBC will definitely not be getting the card.

Remember the SCB card as an asia miles card, not a Cathay card. So they might continue with this dual branded strategy.

True. As SCB is still promoted, it might be here to stay, plus one additional card. If its some obscure mainland bank (like CCB) , people might be hesitant to get it

FWIW - CX co-branded card sucks per se, given that many cards in Hong Kong can earn more miles than the cobrand.

So whoever issues the cards not really important unless the game has changed.

I do want to see who is the unlucky bank though.

They will need to throw on some extra perks to make the card worthwhile. I highly doubt that anyone can beat SCB's rate ($4=1mile for certain categories, $6=1mile for everything else) without it being economically unfeasible.

Given there’s at least two cards offering 1.5% generally, and given vaccine hesitancy https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33314649-post20.html , the new card has to be offering the equivalent of 2% in miles (or $3/am) for me (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33137201-post5.html and https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33137201-post18.html) for me to use generally.

I’m getting 4.4-5.5% on various BoC mobile pay ongoing earn rates and promotions (getting to the extent I get aggressive with restaurants to take mobile pay if they have them*), 4% on online, 4% playing spending offers from bank to bank, 2.28% on non-mobile dining. My HSBC 6x is on overseas so I earn 5.6% there.

Maybe the card has some worthwhile perks or some killer welcome offer.

*case in point - when it was time to pay up tonight at En TST I asked the junior waitress whether they have “Paywave”, making the tapping motion with my iPhone Apple Pay. The answer was no. As my wife was reaching for her SCB Simply Cash and the waitress walked away, I heard the card terminal go off (the dot-matrix variety) and I decided to check out terminal out - I barely held myself from a meltdown when I saw the terminal had mobile reader. I am not sure the waitress saw me for sure or not but as she was walking my way I made a big show of throwing my wife’s produced SCB Simply Cash into my wife’s lap and telling her to tell the waitress to meet me at her cashier station. When she understood what I was insisting on she fetched her manager who ran the mobile pay transaction - the manager explaining they did not realise the mobile reader can be used to read from Apple Pay as well.

most probably ability to earn status/club points by spending to a threshold. thats what QF doing in Aus, assuming they paid for same useless consultants

So the MPC {O) don’t get it.

Apparently overseas members got the same mail initially