intuition

I knwo that many short haul routes have good availability at this time but I think
a) upgrade space is not unlimited, ie more vouchers in the system will impact the ability to use them
and
b) SH vouchers are not locked to shorthaul, but can be used for longhaul too.

It may or may not be a tangible problem, I am only saying that if I read the finnish text correctly, this is one more source of vouchers being printed. A finacial system that prints more money cannot avoid inflation in one form or another.

Jorma

Reading this i thought Lumo actually gets something extra, but looking at Aktia site even Silver gets 3/€.

r2d2

The monthly fee is 6 e, so annually it well be 72 e. The Nordea Mastercard (giving 2 pts / € regardless of tier) is 60 e / year and the SEB Mastercard (giving 2 pts / € for Plats and Lumos) is 50 e / year. I personally value AY+ points at 0.008 € / pt, so the Aktia card would give breakeven at an annual spend of 3000 e, whereas the SEB Mastercard would give it at 3125 e. It's pretty evident that the Aktia card gives better value here.

One downside I can think of is that it would be Visa instead of Mastercard. I have the free S-Bank Visa, but the SEB Mastercard is the only Mastercard I currently have. Sometimes some obscure payment systems accept only the other. I also just recently enjoyed the Kenya Airways 15% off on Mastercard purchases promo. Well, at least Stockmann offers a free Mastercard in Finland, so maybe I have to get one again if I choose to move to the Aktia card.

FFlash

What is downside vs mastercard? IME Visa is equally good accepted as MC

Good news anyhow, will axe my amex again finally and take this

niksal

I haven’t looked at the details, but if monthly fee is 3€, isn’t that 36€/month so cheaper than the SEB MC?

lkrt

Monthly fee is 6 euros.

r2d2

Yes. Sorry, I had it wrong in my earlier message (though the annual cost of 72 e was correct).

manywhere

In some countries only one card (MC or Visa) is preferred by the merchant due to processing fees or something like that.
Also,
Amazon UK was close to blocking UK Visa cards due to fees: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200
Visa cards were a few years back also considered vulnerable to guessing attacks: https://mashable.com/article/visa-ca...-security-risk

r2d2

99,99% of the time their acceptance is the same, but then there is that tiny fraction where only the other one works. Sometimes it might be that the vendor officially supports both, but only the other one works, in which case it might be a question of the issuing bank (e.g. I've failed to by tickets from Avianca with the SEB Mastercard, but I'm sure Mastercards in general aren't a problem for them). In those cases having two different Visa cards issued by different banks might be enough. But then there are some really rare cases where only either one is accepted.

kauppias

Monthly fee is essentially 9,90€ 6€+3,90€ billing fee

kanamurva

No billing fee for elasku.

Imo this is great thing. 50% more points vs. Previous cards. Those sh vouchers are a nice extra but the points are the most important thing here.

FFlash

I never pay bills

This card is right direction in the lousy fin market but then, deval lurking ahead…

cheesyfeet

Well that sucked. Would have loved to receive 3pts for every €, but I was instantly rejected by the algorithm.

I would have changed my SEB for this in a heartbeat.

Courmisch

To quote them, "Aktia on suomalainen pankki. [De] pratar också finska." In other words, they have learnt Finnish.

It is unclear why Finnair bothered to translate all the advertising material on the news letter and the website into English though. Unlike OP or Nordea, Aktia pratar inte engelska.

kauppias

Where do you see this about the elasku? I see where they say they charge 3,90€ for billing and another 3€ if you get a paper bill