MBNA Emirates Skywards Card

Weybridge78

MBNA will no longer issue airline credit cards from 7th November. For anyone that already has an Emirates Skywards card, what is the most likely thing to happen? Will these accounts remain open or will they be closed at a certain period of time? Someone I spoke to at MBNA said that the airline cards are being taken over by a different credit card provider. Is there a chance that another provider may take on existing MBNA Emirates accounts?

[Deleted User]

They'll either migrate to another provider, stay with MBNA but with amended terms, or as an extreme outside bet, remain with the same terms.

I'd place a small sum on the second option.

Weybridge78

Thanks zx81. I hope so. This card is quite important in the household!

Marchitiello

I was expecting this (both the wife and I have this card for buying Emirates tickets..).
With the loss of the Amex network, MBNA won’t be able to offer a good deal on earning miles. A likely scenario is that the airlines will try to work directly with Amex to offer cards like the BA Amex offer.

An alternative scenario is what happened with the IHG card previously offered by Barclaycard and now by Creation. They first stopped offering the Barclaycard version to new applicants and Creation launched their version; and for a period there were two cards on offer. After a while Barclaycard closed the scheme all together, leaving only the Creation version.

MBNA has a record of ending franchise agreements and transferring account holders to other scheme (I ended up with three different MBNA standard card accounts when the old amazon and Virgin cards were discontinued...) .

BorisThomson

I'd also suggest that MBNA will end the Emirates card after a transitional period and give you another card instead. What that card will be will depend on your individual profile. That's what happened with the Diamond Club cards, although that was different because Diamond Club was closing.

There will still be an Emirates CC, just offered by a different provider.

Marchitiello

As expected, both my wife and I received letters yesterday announcing the closure of the Emirates cards from the 20th July 2018 and a move to the Horizon card previously mentioned on this forum.

Weybridge78

Marchitiello wrote: »

As expected, both my wife and I received letters yesterday announcing the closure of the Emirates cards from the 20th July 2018 and a move to the Horizon card previously mentioned on this forum.

Also received this yesterday.