NFL Reward cards to be cancelled, use the points or lose them

I think this is no surprise since many banks are losing money, they are doing what they can to save any money. They have done it by cancelling members cards even if they are in good standing. 


Fortunately, some of them are giving memebers a chance to cash in those points before they do away with the plan.




NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Football League's decision to move its branded credit card business from Bank of America to British banker Barclays is forcing customers of the Charlotte, N.C., bank to scramble to spend reward points before they expire next month.
On message boards, in between talk about upcoming training camps, fans are discussing how they'll spend their points in Bank of America's "NFL Extra Points" program. They have until the end of August, just before Barclays' new program begins in September.
Fans can get a one-hour appearance from the Denver Broncos mascot Miles for 40,000 points, Pittsburgh Steelers head rest covers for 3,250 points, or replica team jerseys for 10,400 points. Fans also can buy "experiences" such as visiting the playing field before the game. A point typically equals $1 spent on the card.
There's a giant countdown clock ticking away the time on the program's site, http://www.nflextrapoints.com -- 57 days as of Monday.
Ann Weinzimmer has racked up about 5,000 points on her Cleveland Browns card. The 33-year-old Cleveland lawyer is frustrated that her accounts seem to keep changing ownership. She's planning to look for better point deals rather than get a new NFL card.
Weinzimmer -- who notes she's really more of a Cincinnati Bengals fan -- will probably spend her points on baseball caps. "I might as well, otherwise you're just throwing it away," she said.
The market for credit cards affiliated with sports teams, universities or other special-interest ventures has been growing and consolidating amid the financial shakeout. The NFL likes having credit card partners because it gets a cut of the business beyond the initial payment for the rights to the franchise. Credit card companies like the programs because rabid fans don't need much convincing to sign up.
Bank of America Corp. won't say why it and the NFL failed to reach agreement on an extension of a contract it has held since 1995. It is still the official bank of Major League Baseball and for four NFL teams, the Washington Redskins, New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers and Dallas Cowboys, which let it issue debit cards with their logos but not credit cards. The NFL, which announced the deal with Barclays last month, declined further comment.
Bank of America's credit card business is large. It reached a peak of $184 billion in balances outstanding in 2008, but it was stung in the recession by growing defaults. The default rate went from 3.9 percent in 2006 after it acquired MBNA to 11.2 percent by the end of 2009, though the rate has started to improve.
The sticking point in the NFL talks may have been the issue of debit cards, said Odysseas Papadimitriou, a former executive with Capital One and now CEO of CardHub.com, a credit card comparison site. Banks prefer debit cards because customers usually keep their accounts longer -- which means less work to land new accounts. And customers are also less likely to run up debt because debit card charges are automatically deducted from customers' checking accounts.

New Basic Credit Card Changes

It seems like there are many more changes happening in Congress that will affect your basic credit and debit card transactions.  From fee to rewards and discounts from paying cash.


Associated Press:

Hate those merchants that won’t let you use your credit card unless you spend more than a certain amount? Well, now they have Congress’s blessing, as long as the minimum is not higher than $10. The Federal Reserve can increase the minimum if it chooses. As for maximums, only the federal government and colleges and universities can limit what people spend. So if you are paying tuition on a credit card and earning a couple of free plane tickets each year, that fun may soon end.
Merchants are also free to offer discounts to people who pay cash instead of using cards, or use debit instead of credit cards. They will not, however, be able to charge one price for people using American Express cards and a lower price for people using Visa and MasterCard credit cards.
Merchants will also not be allowed to give discounts based on which bank issued the debit or credit card you are using. Why would a merchant want to do that? Because the bill gives the Federal Reserve the ability to set a limit on the fees that stores must pay to accept debit cards. The catch here, though, is that only banks with more than $10 billion in assets would be subject to the cap. As a result, merchants may have to pay more to accept debit cards from smaller banks and credit unions than big banks like Bank of America and Chase. And if that were to happen, stores might be tempted to offer discounts to people with big bank debit cards.
Oddly, community bankers and credit unions don’t want to end up earning more money from merchant fees than big banks do, even though it would give them a competitive advantage. Why not? They worry that the big banks will immediately put pressure on Visa and MasterCard to lower merchant fees for all debit cards, not just the big banks’ cards. Thus, the smaller institutions had hoped that the status quo would remain, with everyone continuing to earn fat fees from the merchants forever.
It is not clear what the Fed will do or how the big banks and Visa and MasterCard will react. This could take a few years to play out, or many years if lawsuits start flying. Some merchants may try to play fast and loose with the rules too. Bill Hampel, chief economist of the Credit Union National Association, figures that small retailers might happily accept debit cards with the names of big banks that they recognize and then ask shoppers with cards from no-name institutions to use cash or some other card.