Credit Cards Online Information

This year, I'm still sweating every time I buy presents online. Next year, I'll have a Blue, Blue Christmas. When did American Express start doing everything right? How did the same folks who once alienated merchants with high usage fees and who introduced the ill-conceived Optima card suddenly revolutionize the credit card industry? Simple: they went back to the future.

The Blue card, launched a few months ago by the people who first gave us gold and platinum cards, stands alone as the best new product of 1999, for two reasons. First, it's a masterful reaffirmation of Amex's ability to be the badge-creating leader of the credit/charge card industry Second, it's an honest-to-God technological advance, and one the competition won't be able to copy just by changing colors.

I mean it; I sweat when I type my credit card number into a Web site form. Am I supposed to believe the little pop-up box that tells me I've just entered a "secure connection;" or should I believe the guy on the local news who happily describes online credit card fraud to boost ratings during November sweeps? I'm not all that thrilled with personal credit transactions these days, either: Just last week, they busted some outside vendor at Bloomingdale's for surreptitiously swiping her customers' cards into a little device that entered their card information into her Palm Pilot.

Now, with Blue, I can use my card--I mean, literally use the card--right at home. Thanks to a smart chip (and a chip-reading device Amex is, for now, providing free), I can go to most major Web retailers, find what I want to order, swipe the card, enter my PIN, and have the order form automatically filled in and the stuff paid for. Safely Say alleluia. Say amen.

That same chip serves as platform for limitless features: say a new "wallet" function, which means essentially that Blue can store all your other credit card info ... so if you want to get your Sony points with your Visa, you can use Blue to do that, too. Eventually you'll probably be able to get air miles and reward points with Blue. Eventually you'll forget all about your Sony card.

Best of all--for Amex, anyway--use Blue and you'll likely rediscover a personal attachment to your credit card. Something you haven't felt since you first flashed your gold card. With the smart chip, and the technosavvy it implies, Amex has reestablished the plastic badge.

The most inspired feature of Blue, though, is the fact that it's a credit card. Not a must-be-paid-in-full charge card, like Amex's flagship card and its colored brethren, but a true competitor for Visa, MasterCard, and all the banks they partner with. The neat little trick here is that, by ramping up the features and not overselling the basics, Amex has essentially gotten into the entry-level credit card market without appearing to be slumming. (Strangely, though, some of the creative they've come up with to go with their more inspired media choices, like movie theater ads, wastes time by being a little heavy on the Star Wars effects and a little light on the brand attributes.)

Amex's other recent product launch, while not anywhere near as visible, is almost as laudable in its display of marketing smarts. Remember the rumor that Amex had an extremely exclusive card known as the "black card"? Legend had it that rock stars and captains of industry flashed the little sucker, and merchants and service personnel went weak at the knees. Apparently Amex heard the rumor, too ... and decided to make one. With a $1,000 annual fee, the new (black) Centurian Card is clearly another example of the Acura NSX/Sam Adams Triple Bock maxim: Well-received, ultra-highend products may not mean serious volume, but they do wonders for reaffirming an already solid corporate image.

OK, one quibble: Amex, you've got to stop referring to your new card as "Blue from American Express." When you're launching something so bold, it seems awfully half-hearted to distance your name from it.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:55 AM