Points Scrounger

Letter received today that I shall be receiving a replacement card with only generic B of A design - still love ya, Red Sox!

Since I also have a regular cashback card, I suppose the difference will be Visa vs. MC. For me, the former is set more-or-less indefinitely to Online 3%, so it spends most of the time in a drawer.

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Mark202

Are they replacing it with the generic Customized Cash Rewards, or are they going to product change you to something like the Unlimited Cash Rewards? BoA seems to be aggressively promoting UCR, so I wouldn't be shocked if they tried converting people to it even from other versions of the CCR.

toofast

We also received a notice that our BofA joint checking account with New York Mets debit card and Mets checks will be changing. Debit cards will be re-issued without any Mets branding, and checks when ordered in future will just be generic BofA.

I expect to see MLB announcing a deal with a new bank in the future. Perhaps Chase MLB cards coming soon!

Points Scrounger

Generic cash rewards

mia

Typically the new issuer is announced first, and then the banks negotiate to sell or convert the existing portfolio.

toofast

Given BofA has it's own credit card portfolio I don't see them wanting to sell those customers to another lender. It makes more sense for them just to migrate the customers over to it's own products.

It looks like Capital One is going to become the new MLB partner bank:

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.co...022/01/18.aspx

phltraveler

MBNA had a huge number of affinity credit cards, and that seemingly worked for a long time in the old era of credit card rewards where most cards were just 1%. The agreement that MBNA (and BofA had after takeover) required them to pay something like $2 for a new cardholder, $1 a year for an active cardholder (purchase within the last year), and 0.25% of each purchase to an affiliated university. With 1% cashback and US interchange, that worked. These agreements were made over long terms (something like a decade).

I suspect with the competition among rewards cards and people carrying less about what cards look like than what sign up bonuses & ongoing cashback that they had, that these agreements made less sense than they used to. I got a notification that my card would become the standard Bank Americard Cash rewards card in early 2021 and it did.

I'm not sure what terms the MLB had with BofA, but if they had similar terms that are too generous in the modern landscape of interchange/rewards, it may be why they declined to renew the deal.