Consumer affairs

by Robert McGarvey

In the past month, one of my Amazon orders vanished, the company admitted. In another order the wrong product was shipped, an oximeter instead of the herbal medicine I had bought and I have no idea how a gadget was confused with a bottle of pills. In a third shipment the delivery person claimed there was no access to the building but where I live is a highrise condo with a 24-7 desk attendant.

What I saw was a company spiraling into ineptitude.

Yes, I know there are widespread labor shortages and also that there are global supply chain issues. But in all my cases Amazon failed on its own. It did not meet delivery dates of its own choosing and did not ship the products it said it had in stock.

I found myself pondering my future shopping habits.

I have been an Amazon customer for 20+years, I have a Chase Amazon card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases, and it was just six weeks ago that I wrote in this space that I had no interest in the Amex Plat reward that would give me a free WalMart+ membership (kind of Amazon Prime without the videos).

I should have remembered, times do change, very fast and unpredictably.

A headline in Sunday’s London Telegraph caught my eye: It won’t be long before Jeff Bezos returns to rescue Amazon.  The subhead: Founder must retake control to get struggling retail juggernaut back on track.

On Friday, April 29 Amazon reported its first quarter numbers: a loss of $3.84 billion. Its forecast for Q2 also disappointed the street.

And then I remembered I’d sniffed at and ignored WalMart related perks offered to Amex Plat cardholders, what were they again?

I immediately found one: Spend $40 at WalMart, get $10 back. Good for two uses.

I placed two trial orders, just to see how WalMart worked, to explore the product selection, and to get a sense of the efficiency of the operation.

Besides $20 back, in the bargain I got 50+ Rakuten points that credit as Amex Membership Miles. For doing essentially nothing. Shopping at WalMart.com and clicking the activate Rakuten popup when logging in.

As for overall efficiency, WalMart passed which should be no surprise. From the start the company has been built around efficiency (and the resulting cost savings).

Then my mind began to wonder, is that WalMart+ freebie still on for Plat cardholders? It is. I signed up, and within a couple days the monthly fee ($12.95) was covered with a credit.

There’s a dedicated landing page for the WalMart+ deal. The only tricky bit is that only a monthly membership is reimbursed (don’t sign up for an annual membership).

What comes with WalMart+?  Early access to Black Friday deals (four hours before the hoi polloi). Free shipping – no minimum.  Free delivery from stores (including groceries).  Prescription drug discounts.  Member prices on gasoline.  A Scan and Go feature that lets you shop in store and pay with your phone.

Have I abandoned Amazon forever? No.  In fact A few days ago I bought a carbon steel wok from Amazon – I did not see a wok of the same quality at WalMart.  Delivery was as promised.

But I will be putting in more orders with WalMart and, so far, find the product selection generally acceptable (high end woks aside), the pricing very competitive with Amazon, and the delivery – so far – much more consistent and reliable than Amazon.

The bigger point is that Amex Plat indeed does save, even with decidedly not upscale retailers such as WalMart.

Again, I know I preach spending a minimal amount of time studying Amex Plat’s rewards and benefits but, hark, I did not violate my rule.  I fortunately remembered the WalMart+ deal and found it in a few seconds. As for the $10 back on $40 at WalMart, that I did fid in looking at new benefits and, again, seconds were involved.

Incidentally I just now got notification from Amazon that a bag of Earl Grey tea I had ordered on April 24 is scheduled for delivery May 2 and I assume it must have swum here from India.  I had tried to cancel that order at Amazon but the online process was balky and I do not wish calls to Amazon customer service on anyone.

I will probably keep the tea.  We drink a lot of the stuff and and keeping it will save me aggravation with Amazon.

Calling Jeff Bezos, where are you when your company — and its customers! — need you?

By Robert McGarvey

Business travelers have been sidelined for two years, thanks to the pandemic, but you know who has not been sidelined: hackers, cyber criminals, and a huge cast of malefactors in Russia, China, Iran, and, yes, of course the United States who want to take advantage of road weary travelers who too often let down their guards and thus are easy marks.

So I was not surprised when I saw that the World Travel & Tourism Council had worked with Microsoft to generate a report on cyber risks and travel, a business that is exceptionally vulnerable because, per WTTC data, 80% of the players in travel are small and medium sized businesses and that group generally has been laggard in arming up to thwart cyber attackers.

Phocuswire reported: “Julia Simpson, WTTC president and CEO, says: ‘Technology and digitalization play a key role in making the whole travel experience more seamless, from booking a holiday, to checking in for a flight or embarking on a cruise.

‘But the impact of cyberattacks carries enormous financial, reputational and regulatory risk.’”

Reprising Capt. Willard

That quote put me in mind of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard as he passed time in a Saigon hotel room waiting for his mission in Apocalypse Now.  Muttered Willard, “Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker and every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.”

YouTube video clip (two minutes) here.

As we have grown soft sipping Scotch nursing our memories of hotel rooms past the cyber bad actors have grown tougher, smarter, hardened and hungrier.

And as we go out on the road again we will be prime targets.

The Leaky Sieve Travel Industry

The WTTC/Microsoft report gloomily set this stage: “Cyber criminals tend to be opportunistic and will exploit any possible area of vulnerability, from a payment process to a loyalty programme. While loyalty programmes enhance the travel experience by creating reward opportunities based on travel, they are also a target of cyber criminals. These programmes contain sensitive data which makes them susceptible to attack, underlining the need to treat these programmes as part of the larger eco-system of the business.”

The report also noted: “According to Kelly White at Mastercard, ‘most people assume and expect security and privacy,’ both in how the data is being used and stored. This highlights the trust consumers have had in their providers, even in the absence of overt safety measures.”

Face this fact: your security on the road is on you. That includes taking personal responsibility for safeguarding your personal data and credit card info when dealing with travel providers.

You cannot trust travel providers. They have been cyber leaky sieves for decades and there is no question that in the past two years of economic oblivion most have grievously neglected their cyber security.

Hotels, airlines, cruise ships have lost literally billions of dollars in the past two years.  What budget item haven’t they cut?

Depend on them to protect you and, honestly, make sure you pack a rosary and dutifully say your prayers on the road because you will definitely need God’s help.  

6 Steps to Better Road Safety

What steps should you take to stay cyber safe in 2022:

• Do not use public WiFi.  Use your phone to create a personal hotspot — cellular data is vastly safer than public WiFi.
• If you must use public WiFi, always have a VPN as a filter.  And never use a free VPN
• This all is definitely true for hotel WiFi – don’t use it and if you must use a VPN.
• Regularly check loyalty points totals – the sooner you blow the whistle about a theft the more likely matters will quickly resolve in your favor.  Even smarter: drive your totals down as near as you can to  zero. Loyalty points spent cannot be stolen. 
• Never, ever use a debit card at a hotel, airline, saloon, or restaurant. Your federal protections are much stronger with credit cards.  
• When traveling – especially abroad – use a credit card that has built in chip and PIN protection.  That means you need to enter a four digit code to complete the transaction. This is vastly safer than the US standard of chip and signature.  Personally I use Diners Club card. Here are others noted by WalletHub. 

Look, I too want travel businesses to read and act on the Microsoft report which is stuffed with suggestions for toughening defenses.

But I am not optimistic.

Trust no one in the travel industry.

 Seth Brickman’s career includes the US Navy (remember Top Gun? That was his motivator). Then he landed at Microsoft, he co-founded a startup Nicolette which builds tools to help parents make informed decisions about their baby’s health, then he was at Amazon where he earned a patent  involving Alexa and the content delivered to its screen.

Now he is at QCash, a CUSO created by Washington State Employees Credit Union (hear CU 2.0 Podcast #56 with past QCash CEO Ben Morales).

Why QCash? In the podcast Brickman tells why but the short version is that he had reached a point in his life where he wanted to do a lot of good and he joined QCash because it seemed to him to be the vehicle that could make that happen.

Listen to this section of the podcast multiple times. Take notes. You want to get highly talented techies into your organization. Brickman tells how.

At QCash, his dreams are big. The CUSO presently serves 50 credit unions. His goal is to double that number by year end.

Partly it’s that Brickman has tweaked QCash’s product messaging.  It no longer refers to itself as an alternative to payday lending. Now it’s about helping members through what QCash calls life events.

Don’t think QCash is abandoning the people it was created to help. It isn’t. The QCash focus remains making loans – oftentimes to individuals who might not qualify for traditional lending products – to help members deal with life events, from a blown car transmission to false teeth.

What’s exciting about QCash is that its loans do not involve a traditional application. It connects to the core and that gives it ample insight into this member who wants a loan.  

Brickman also is expanding the QCash toolbox – for instance there now is an emergency response loan that will let a participating credit initiate lending to community members after a natural disaster – an earthquake, fire, even Covid-19 – literally within minutes of the event. How cool is that? The credit union can legitimately call itself a financial first responder.

What could be more in the credit union spirit than that?

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

My name is Bob and I am a points addict.

Actually I am not and in this blog I will explore the Siren call of points and how I managed to escape the trap. Just barely. It has become terribly easy to be seduced by the allure of points as a free passport to, well, anything you desire. But it is not that easy or even that honest.

Understand, for starters, I mean no disrespect to real 12 step programs. AA has been of enormous benefit to close friends of mine, also family.

I also do not know if there is some kind of program that aims to help points addicts. But there should be because, honestly, it has become very, very easy to slip into a mindset where it becomes crucially important to score this 500 point bonus here, that triple point bonanza there and, along the way, why the hell not get a new Alaska Air card because it comes with 60,000 miles and who cares if I don’t recall flying Alaska in a quarter century.

I see the headline and indeed my heart beats – Get a new Jag, get 50,000 United miles. Yes, I know Jags are unreliable pieces of rolling junk and have been for a decade or longer. Classic Jags – pre the Ford purchase of the marque in 1999 – have undeniable beauty, swagger even, that may cancel out the reliability question and, besides, by the time a car is 25 it really does not matter what its reliability was when it rolled off the assembly line. Would I love an old Jag? Very possibly and I still regret letting an old Jag that was in the family slip away. But a new one?

Even so…50k United miles.

And then there is the “mystery” bonus – free miles on United and American – limited time only and what miles you get varies depending upon…well, who knows? Free miles are free miles. Do you click the links? Warning: probably those promotions have expired. The real question is, did you click the links when they were live? Did you get the bonuses?

Personally I did and I didn’t. I clicked the link, saw my bonus (500 miles after spending $125 on my United Explorer card) but…I caught myself. I have no rational plan for accumulating enough United miles to matter and presently I have but a handful and an extra 500, or 625 after the needed purchase, won’t make an iota of difference. I’ll still have a useless handful.

But I caught myself.

I also did not get the pre approved Alaska Air offer, although I will admit it is tempting. But I already have a couple cards I never use (United Explorer I am looking at you) and they may be lonely for companionship but I am not going to stuff my wallet with cards I know I won’t use.

So how do I cope with my almost addiction?

I have my own 2 step program.

Step one: I monitor and severely limit how much time I spend on sites devoted to points addictions. How to identify them? A clue is that the word point or mile is in the site name. Those are the ones to be wary of because, suddenly, you will find yourself clicking around an IHG card application because you just read about a super new offer even though you cannot recall the last time you stayed at an IHG hotel. They toss catnip in our paths and who can resist when you have the addiction propensity?

At one such site the business model hinges on affiliate marketing, a fancy way to describe getting paid finders fees for steering new business. There’s nothing wrong per se with affiliate marketing – I am a fan of the NYTimes WireCutter site which uses affiliate links – but always remember the underlying business model when visiting such sites.

Step two: I limit my real points hunt to offers and rewards on Amex Plat and, yes, the need to search annoys me (why not just be nice and give it to me) but if Amex insists on gamifying the experience I’ll play. But only a very little. Maybe five minutes every few weeks looking at my 100 Amex offers.

That’s enough to find hidden little gems. For instance: an Amex offer that gifts me 2000 Amex miles for Spending $3500 – enrollment required. It can gift the points multiple times but the offer is timed (I believe it expires for me at month end). I do nothing to get the bonus. Just use the card as usual.

So now maybe I should re-introduce myself: My name is Bob and I am not a points addict but came close to being one. But not enough to be one.

by Robert McGarvey

Maybe the pandemic is in our rearview mirrors and, for now at least, few of us are letting worries about a recession or even the Ukraine war disrupt our travel plans. But what very well may stamp void on our plans are genuine worries about sustainability and the price travel inflicts on the planet.

By most counts, aviation produces 2% of the planet’s CO2 emissions and it also produces untold volumes of particulates, NOx and more.

Numbers get grimmer. 80% of the planet’s people have never flown. At most 10% of the people fly in any given year. That means a handful of us are doing a lot of bad to the environment and this is resulting in deaths of many animals – whole species in some cases – flooding of many lands and, well, just plain mayhem as climate change hits us all in the chin.

New McKinsey research says these facts – increasingly – figure into our decisions to travel or not and also how we travel.

Said McKinsey, “Most passengers understand that aviation has a significant impact on the environment. Emissions are now the top concern of respondents in 11 of the 13 countries polled, up from four in the 2019 survey. More than half of respondents said they’re ‘really worried’ about climate change, and that aviation should become carbon neutral in the future.”

For now, however, most of us are all talk, no action. Said McKinsey, “Travelers continue to prioritize price and connections over sustainability in booking decisions, for now. This may be partly because no airline has built a business system or brand promise on sustainability.”

That said, the percentage of us who say they want to minimize their environmental impact has crept up to 36%.

Sort through the many McKinsey numbers and a few conclusions seem plain including this: big companies simply must and will factor environmental factors into decisions and budgeting for business travel. That will be all the truer of US and EU based organizations. I continue to see business travel recovering but it may never reach the 2019 heights. I see large events (500+ attendees) continuing to lag. I also see intramural events sputtering. Sales calls have and will continue to rise in numbers. Events with 50 or fewer seem to be a thriving market and that may well continue.

The point is, even if business travelers may want to travel as though it was 2019 again, corporate higher ups and bean counters will tamp down those enthusiasms. It’s not good for the balance sheet. not good for public relations and ESG efforts (environment, social, governance), and it’s not good for the planet.

Which puts the flight bag in our hands. Will we step up or restrain personal and leisure travel? For now it looks as though we are all in. Domestic US hotels are seeing rising occupancy and accordingly are raising their rates. despite cutting and reducing many services and amenities due to labor shortages and supply chain bottlenecks. Airports too are clogged with pax while many of their employees have gone permanently missing.

Will we still want to travel as the negatives of travel become more glaring, the costs rise, and – meantime – the countdown towards an environmental Armageddon gets louder?

Just maybe what we all need is a nudge from elsewhere.

Here’s the one, very big shoe we are still waiting to fall: “The survey results and McKinsey’s work in the industry lead us to believe that the market is ready for a forward-thinking airline to chart a route to a cleaner future for the industry. Leading airlines that build a business strategy and brand promise on sustainability will likely attract a growing share of business and leisure travelers, fresh capital and talent, and new allies across the industry, government, and society at large.”

Where is that airline?

Many decades of watching US carriers has left me pessimistic such a carrier will rise from the rubble. They tend to act in lockstep, much like 14 year-olds at a school dance. “You go first!”

Could such a carrier emerge abroad? In the EU? Maybe, but the flagrant failures of legacy European flag carriers leave one with doubts.

You know what? Maybe this eco carrier will emerge from an unlikely place such as the Middle East. Hell, if Saudi Arabia believes it can pump hundreds of billions into a tourist industry and make us holiday in the hot sand just maybe it will be a Middle Eastern carrier that proudly and boldly waves the eco flag.

Or maybe I am waiting for the airline Godot.

By Robert McGarvey

I have no memory of why I got a Diners Club card but I can tell you mine was issued in 1985, deep into the Citi ownership of what had been the pioneering independent travel and restaurant card.  Invented in 1950, Diners Club was a breakthrough dazzler of an idea: paying for restaurant meals with plastic (actually a cardboard card in its original format).

Unless you are 60+ you have no idea how difficult paying for a restaurant meal was back in the day – especially a spur of the moment meal at a white table cloth establishment. You needed a walletful of cash.

Remember, banks kept banker’s hours – most closed tight at 3pm. There were no ATMs (they weren’t widespread and easy to use until the 1980s).  If you were a regular at a saloon you probably could borrow $10 for a cab ride home – but enough for a fancy meal? Not likely.

Diners Club made dining out easy. Sort of. I still remember studying restaurant doors to discern exactly what credit cards were accepted where.

I never got a Diners Club in its heyday but did have Carte Blanche and soon American Express (“a member since 1975″).

But Diners got into my wallet in the mid 1980s as Citi managed it seemingly with nearly complete indifference.  Diners was acquired by Discover Financial in 2008 – didn’t know that, did you?

But the North American operation – US and Canada – was operated by Citi until 2009 until it sold it to the Bank of Montreal.

Different operators own and manage different international outposts.

In North America Diners Club runs on Mastercard rails. For all practical purposes it is a Mastercard with a few frills.

The annual fee on the professional card I carry is $95.

I’ll tell you too I had thought hard about canceling it but then BMO was the first – and for a long time only – major US card issuer that offered a chip and PIN credit card. Few still do despite the abundant evidence that fraudulent use of lost and stolen credit cards plummets when a PIN is required (as one is on probably all debit cards and all across Europe PIN is mandatory on cards of all types). In the US credit card issuers have resisted requiring PINs, presumably because they think we are too lazy or lame  to use it. Even though we do use it on debit card transactions.  Go figure.

There even were several years of fretting by many that European merchants and restaurants would decline American pinless chip card and in fact it did happen with some frequency. But by 2019 the Europeans accepted we were impossible and now there are few obstacles to using a pinless card abroad. 

I nonetheless still like that PIN feature on the Diners card and it’s a reason I have kept it.  

What else do I get for my $95?

There’s a rewards program that awards one point per eligible dollar spent and The Points Guy values these rewards at 2.1 cents apiece, the highest value I see on the recent list. 

Diners miles can be transferred into many airline programs – Delta, Southwest, Alaska, El Al, and more.

And because this is a Mastercard it can be used almost everywhere which means accumulating points can be easy.

There is access to over 1000 airport lounges worldwide.  

There’s extended warranty coverage on most purchases, roadside assistance (Amex discontinued similar in 2020), and there’s also primary collision insurance on rental cars.

Oh, one either thing. About 10 years ago I got a call from Diners fraud. “Did you just buy a tank of gasoline in Chennai, India?”

I responded that I had never been to India, never bought gasoline there, and wouldn’t drive there if I went (you’ve seen the videos about driving in India) 

I don’t remember ever getting such a realtime call from another credit issuer.

The charge was obliterated from my statement – I never saw it – and my card was canceled and reissued with me doing nothing except reporting that I had never been to India.

So my reasons for retaining a Diners card are, well, idiosyncratic – I am crazy for PIN and I liked the fraud protocol.  

And I kind of like the rewards program and lounge access (although I’m unsure the latter gives me anything I don’t get with Amex Plat).

Are those reasons good enough to persuade you to put a Diners card in your wallet?  That’s for you to say.

For me the takeaway is that, with peripheral cards, my reasons for keeping (or ditching) are going to be idiosyncratic. Probably yours will be too.

More proof of my thesis that there just won’t be one card to rule them all. No more.

by Robert McGarvey

There is a wealth of opportunity in the health and wellness sector. In a recent research report,  Global Wellness Institute noted, “As we emerge from the pandemic, GWI predicts that the wellness economy will return to its robust growth. We project 9.9% average annual growth, with the wellness economy reaching nearly $7.0 trillion in 2025.”

Continued at Startup Savant

Profiles of 4 startups,

by Robert McGarvey

On March 23 Apple announced the debut of its digital driver’s license – and within a few minutes of learning about it, I had it installed on my iPhone.

It would have been installed sooner except I had to update the OS on the phone. Once that was handled, it was smooth and quick sailing.

Right now, only Arizona licenses work with the Apple technology. Apple has said other states will soon follow, including Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico. Timelines are unclear.

If you do not have an Arizona driver’s license, forget about it for now.

If you do not have an iPhone or Apple Watch, forget about it.

So I pat myself on the back in congratulation of my early adoption.

But exactly what have I adopted? What are my benefits?

Back up a few steps. Arizona, presumably to keep state operating costs low, does not have that many DMV officers where licenses can be renewed. So when I last renewed it I used a privately run facility that charges a few dollars more but it was nearby and there was no line.

One hitch: the license has this notice – “NOT FOR FEDERAL IDENTIFICATION.”

Typically I had used a driver’s license at the TSA checkpoints so this was a problem. Yes, I have a passport – two in fact – but they are in a large case that I bring on international trips. Not always on domestic.

I bought a US Passport card – the same size as a driver’s license. Problem solved. It fits in my wallet right behind the driver’s license.

Would my driver’s license in fact work with the Apple system?

Yep.

Little by little, Apple is adding features to its wallet app that augment its usefulness. I also have a BART Clipper card installed in the wallet, for instance. An Apple Card is in there too.

Will I ever actually use the digital driver’s license that now claims pride of place in the Apple Wallet?

JoeSentMe columnist Phil Baker is cynical about the usefulness of this Apple tool: “The best I can say for the digital license is that it’s a useful way to back up your physical license. I’ll continue to carry my real license with me and not depend on my phone. Clearly, it’s in Apple’s interest to turn the iPhone into a digital wallet, but it’s doing it because it can, not because there’s a need.”

Note too that not all airports will accept the Apple digital ID. Apple acknowledges this: “Driver’s licenses and state IDs in Wallet are currently available for use in select states at select TSA checkpoints. Travelers should refer to TSA checkpoint signage to confirm availability,” it said in its press release.

9to5Mac says the list of locations where it can be used is in fact singular: “For now, it looks like certain TSA checkpoints at the Phoenix International Airport are the only officially supported places to use Apple digital IDs.”

If your flights are not taking you to PHX, maybe just forget about this for now.

And also understand that, for now, the digital ID cannot be substituted for a plastic license if stopped by a cop who insists on seeing your license. You still will need to carry the plastic.

So I don’t disagree with Baker but I got one anyway. Why? Because I write about this stuff, it interests me, and I do believe we need stronger, better ID systems in this country. Perhaps the Apple ID is a step in that direction.

For sure, Apple’s game plan is clear. It wants to sell states – like Arizona, which already has no fondness for issuing license renewals – to contract with Apple to assume the licensing responsibility. Assuming Arizona sticks to its skinflint GOP budget biases I can see AZ hopping aboard that train.

Here’s the bottomline: this remains very early days for digital IDs on our phones. Everybody knows they are coming, almost everybody applauds this, but almost nobody has marked a day on their calendar when they plan to shred their plastic driver’s licenses.

Me, I remain glad I did it. Fast, easy and, for now, no cost.

Will I ever use it?

Somebody has to be the test subject. Why not me?

By Robert McGarvey

You learned this in high school: You are who you eat lunch with. That is fact.  You might have fancied yourself a brainiac…but if you lunched with the sweat hogs, well, the world knew otherwise.

Which brings us to this cautionary wisdom shared recently by Kirk Drake, founder of the CU2.0 consulting firm and CEO of CUSO Ongoing Operations.  There are three kinds of fintechs, said Drake. There are those that want to eat your lunch (think Rocket Mortgage). There are those that want to sell you lunch (Zelle). And there are those that want to lunch with you.

Drake offered that observation at a small CU2.0 gathering of credit union executives and fintech entrepreneurs – so that made this especially pointed commentary.

By Drake’s measure, credit union executives want to dodge the first group of fintechs – you are zebra on the savannah and they are hungry hyenas.

As for the second group, there are some that want to sell you lunch who are worth paying.  Do you want to develop your own core system, for instance? 

But the ones you really, definitely, want to get to know are the fintechs that hope to partner with credit unions in relationships that are intended to benefit both parties.

And the good news on that front is that nowadays there are lots of startup and mid-stage fintechs that are hungry to share a meal – and maybe earn some money – with credit unions.

Case in point of a fintech that wants to lunch with credit unions: Quilo, a quick installment loan company – its AI driven technology offers loan decisions literally in seconds – that is co-founded by Don Shafer, who also co-founded Kasasa, which was formed to offer community financial institutions – credit unions – competitive checking products.

The Quilo game plan is similar.  Shafer’s plan is to put Quilo loans into the services of credit unions and community banks who will own the paper and set the loan decisioning terms.  Quilo also encourages credit unions to enlist their local merchants in offering Quilo to their customers.

It’s not Buy Now Pay Later, it’s not a conventional credit card – but Quilo is a way for a consumer to set specific terms and payment schedules for the purchases they make.

At Carter Credit Union in Louisiana, CEO Joe Arnold told me he is an early Quilo adopter and that’s because he sees the fintech’s tools helping his members, merchants in his communities and the credit union.  

Arnold also indicated he believes Quilo will bring in more members to Carter – very probably younger members.

Want more details on Quilo and how Arnold sees it helping the credit union? Listen to this podcast with Shafer and Arnold.

Know too that there will be many more fintechs such as Quilo.  Why? Credit union money is looking to seed them.

An advocate of this trend is Ray Crouse, CEO of Parsons Federal Credit Union and board president at NACUSO.  In this podcast Crouse presents the case for credit unions investing in CUSOs that are set up to stimulate fintech innovation.  That investment strategy is permitted under NCUA regulation and it is gaining favor, said Crouse. Crouse has skin in this game because, as he discussed, Parsons has made sizable fintech investments and his plan is to make more

More optimism – and money – comes from Martin Walker, a vice president at venture capital firm Next Level Ventures which administers the Curql fund, formed to help fund fintechs with potential to help credit unions grow. Curql has a warchest available for investing of $250 million which makes it a real player. The ambitions are large but, said Walker in this podcast, the interest on the part of fintechs in helping credit unions grow is real and growing.  

Add this up and there are fintechs with good ideas and increasingly they are getting investments aimed at involving them in credit unions.  

So remember to be picky about who you eat lunch with. You were and always will be who you lunch with.  With tech make sure the companies are ones that sincerely want to lunch with the credit union.

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.