Nationwide ends 'Cash Rewards' card

Milarky

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/mediacentre/PressRelease_this.asp?ID=779

With effect from 11 January 2006 Nationwide is closing the Cash Reward credit card to new business. Nationwide regularly reviews products and services to ensure it is giving maximum value to members. Following such a review of its credit card business the Society is to focus on the Classic credit card.

Existing Cash Reward credit card customers are unaffected by this change.

thetope

i saw this yesterday as well... am very glad i changed over from classic card to cash reward last month! not that i actually expect to make that much money from the cash reward, but still...

pin

Nationwide, proud to be more like a bank every day.

Nationwide have slowly been chipping away at their great benefits over the years. I'm very scared we will here one day they start foreign currency loading on their cards.

Rafter

Don't blame Nationwide! They are owned by their members remember.

Blame the other banks for pulling every trick in the book to make themselves look better value than Nationwide.

Blame the retailers and regulators who have reduced the fees they pay to the banks which pay for the cashback.

Blame the consumers who overspend on their cards and then cannot afford to pay nationwide back.

And blame the moneysaving experts who have hundred of loss making accounts for Nationwide by paying their balance in full and making full use of introductory offers, cashback and free foreign currency transactions.

Remember, just because Nationwide don't charge you, doesn't mean they don't have to pay the same processing costs to visa, foreign exchange conversion costs, statement and card printing, fraud, bad debt and call centre costs as all the other banks.

They have choices, either reduce benefits to new card holders or reduce the rates available to their savers or increase rates to borrowers in order to stay out of the red.

Sounds like a fair decision to me.

R.

JohalaReewi

The cash reward was axed to 0.25% anyway (and does not apply to foreign currency transactions), plus the very short time between statement and payment due dates have made this one of the least attractive cashback cards on the market. Not surprised it has gone.

HGLTsuperstar

Stopped using my nationwide for the cashback long time ago, it is though still tops for using abroad

newfoundglory

pin wrote:

Nationwide, proud to be more like a bank every day.

Nationwide have slowly been chipping away at their great benefits over the years. I'm very scared we will here one day they start foreign currency loading on their cards.

Quite possible. But that wouldn't be unreasonble, because it does cost nationwide for those transactions. Currently they are just using the profits made to offer them for free. They might do something like offer free usage in europe (where it doesnt cost them anything for you to use your card), and 1% outside europe (which is about how much they absorb and pay for you in all other cases). And as someone pointed out, there are other hidden costs as well.

Although i suppose you could argue that they make a % from the transactions you make anyway...

I can see why they have stopped thier cash reward card. There aren't really any benefits to it besides the free foreign usage at the moment.