The One Card Hoax: One Can’t Rule Them All Anymore

By Robert McGarvey

It has long been a staple article in the arsenal of journalists who cover credit cards: What card must you get because it rules them all? I’ve written that article, you have read many similar and I still see it published today.

Is it Amex Plat, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Venture X?

What if it’s none of them?

That’s because just yesterday it occurred to me that the whole quest has become a farcical artifact of a past time.

If you had asked me 25 years ago what one card I could not go without I would, unhesitatingly, have told you Amex Gold.

I might even have been right at that time, especially if a person also had a standby Visa or Mastercard to use in places that declined Amex.  I had and still have Diners Club which rides on Mastercard’s rails.  So I was well covered.

What happened yesterday is that I was making a purchase online at REI and I remembered two facts: I had a $100 gift card from REI for getting an REI Mastercard and if I used that credit card at REI I get 5% cash back. A backpack I wanted to buy started out at $179.95, was on sale at $134.73, I had a 20% members only discount coupon, and the price got knocked down to $107.78.  After the gift card I owed $7.78, which I put on the REI Mastercard and earned 5% back (a few pennies).

Here’s the point: I probably will use that particular card only at REI.  

Which reminded me that a half century ago I had cards issued by department stores – I remember having cards at Woodward + Lothrop and Hecht’s in Washington DC. I also has gasoline cards that were generally good only at the particular brand (I had an ARCO card, also Union).  I remember having so many cards that I needed to buy a special wallet just to hold the things. Did I have 20 cards? Probably more because when I moved to Los Angeles I needed LA department store cards but I was also spending a lot of time on assignment in Washington DC so I still needed the DC cards…and, damn, just tracking all this plastic was work.

Then several things happened.  Department stores began accepting third party credit cards. So did gas stations.  And lots of restaurants began taking plastic (even McDonald’s in 2003).  

By the mid 1990s, I began shedding little used – often simply unused – plastic.  I even stopped carrying that special little card holder.

Then in 2018 I bought a small Fjallraven card holder – that should have tipped me off that I was in the middle of a changed relationship with my cards.

More and more were becoming single purpose plastic, like the REI Mastercard. For instance: I use Discover only on the rotating 5% cash back purchase categories (gasoline is featured April-June and that is a timely perk).  In Jan-March grocery stores were the category and I collected my $75 maximum cash back shopping at Sprouts, a Phoenix based Whole Foods imitator that I like shopping at occasionally, just to give Whole Foods some competition for my dollar.

As for Whole Foods, I have a Chase Amazon card that gives me 5% back on purchases there and Amazon and I used that card only at those two stores.

I also have a Chase United Explorer card that, guess what, I only use at United Air and a Barclays American Air card that is only used at AA. Both grant priority boarding, free bag check, and, with the United card, two passes for entry to the United clubs. The United card also offers 25% back on inflight purchases and free TSA Pre or Global Entry.  With the American card purchases directly apply to qualifying for elite status.  I believe I am dumping the United card this year but, living in Phoenix, American and Delta are more useful to me.

A wild card in my wallet is a Venmo card that offers 3% cash back on whatever category of spending is biggest in a month (lesser cash back on other categories).  But I especially like this card because I collect my rewards in Bitcoin, meaning that whenever talk shifts to crypto I can nod sagely and say that of course I am a player. It doesn’t matter that my holdings amount to a number that falls after a decimal point and a bunch of zeros.   

Of course, Amex Plat is a big card in my wallet but, as I have documented, it actually pays me money to keep it. And its wallet share is much lower than it had been. Under 50% of my credit card spend today. Ten years ago I’d guess it was 75%.

One reality: my cards won’t be yours and vice-versa. I can tell you what I use and why but it’s for you to think about your lifestyle and which cards best support it. Cards now are a hyper personal issue.

Whew, I liked when one card ruled them all. But that just won’t work in 2022.