The Wall Street Journal says that Wells Fargo had to overspend to break into co-brand credit cards, and that as a result they’ve slowed down in the space.
Their first two deals were Choice Privileges and Bilt Rewards. And the piece has a bunch of details about the Bilt deal that should be pretty encouraging for Bilt cardmembers. With Bilt they were too generous, so the bank isn’t making money, and they’re locked into a long-term deal to keep doing this. But Wells Fargo comes across here as savvy, pivoting their focus to building products that are more profitable and encouraging consumers to use those, even as they’ve been willing to experiment creatively and learn, while recruiting younger customers.
It’s such a…