About Me 0062: Making Money on Internet

Surprisingly enough, AmEx’s 20% rebate is actually a good deal. They offer competitive rates on airfare and hotel booking, and allow you to pay entirely or partially with points.

Numbers, crunched

American Express points, when used through the Pay with Points program, are valued at one cent per point, so you could redeem 97,600 points for that $976 flight to Heathrow from San Francisco. After the 20% bonus is credited to your account (it happens after the fact, and takes 10-12 weeks, according to the Pay with Points website), you’ll have spent 78,000 points, or $780. That’s $185 saved over booking with Kayak or Travelocity, enough that only one-third of your England trip will be spent lamenting the weakness of the American dollar.

American Express Platinum is steadily earning our respect

We’re generally happy with American Express as a card for international travelers, especially since the Platinum and Centurion joined the ranks of credit cards with no foreign transaction fee. Now that you can redeem your points through American Express Travel and get 20% of those points back, we’re even happier.

The American Express Platinum is one of the best-known premium credit cards, and offers a number of perks for international (or domestic) travelers. There’s a 50,000-point signing bonus (worth $500), a base rewards rate of 1% and an annual fee of $450. And based on the numbers we ran above, it only takes a couple of international flights to make up for most of that hefty fee.

Skipping customs and sipping champagne: the joys of premium credit cards

Beyond the numbers, however, the true value of the AmEx Platinum (and, really, for all premium credit cards) lies in the lovely perks. The Platinum shells out $200 in refunds for travel-related expenses like baggage fees and in-flight meals, and a free Priority Pass membership that gives access to over 600 airport lounges worldwide. A special boon for international travelers is the $100 credit towards the government Global Entry program, which allows you to skip customs lines coming back to the US (after, of course, an extensive background check). You also receive one companion ticket a year, which allows someone to fly with you, round trip, in the same class, as long as you book a business or first class ticket.

Banks Cashing In On Data

If a person's primary method of payment is some type of credit or debit card, the banks know everywhere that person goes, what they spend their money on, what their preferences are, what locations they frequent and so on.

Selling that data is an interesting method of making money for banks. Federal regulations are strict on what customer data banks can share and with what entities. According to the Tribune story, the bank's system is set up in such a way that the deals are coming from the bank, not from the merchant. Data is processed between the merchants and the banks through intermediaries, such as Cartera or Cardlytics. Personally identifiable information is randomized and customers are given numeric codes, of which only the bank will know who the user truly is.

According to the Tribune, 58% of customers have redeemed at least one deal. The incentive programs are opt-out, which 2% of customers have chosen to do. Merchant funded incentive programs could be a $1.7 billion vertical for the banking industry by 2015, even with the banks only taking 25% of the fee for the incentive.

Privacy, Data, Money = Advantage Banks

Opt-in or opt-out is a tricky question when it comes to data and privacy. Companies like Facebook have gotten into hot water with privacy advocates by making changes to their privacy policy and settings opt-out in a way or place that a lot of users will not notice or check. Think of it this way - are you getting offers from your bank? Did you remember the bank asking you if it could share your information or was it in the fine print of your cardholder's agreement somewhere?

When it comes to the Internet, money is inextricably tied to user data. The companies with the most data about their users tend to make the most money. Banks are the perfect avenue for incentivized deals because they can offer merchants exactly what they are looking for.

For instance, a 29-year-old male with an income above $40,000 that purchases shoes three times a year would be a perfect target for a deal from Designer Shoe Warehouse or Footlocker. Groupon cannot give merchants that level of granular information.

What will this mean for the fledgling daily deals industry going forward? Groupon had a litany of risk factors in its filing for its initial public offering and "inability to stave off competition and clones" was one of them. Facebook and Google are secondary players in this market. Both have created various types of deals and "offer" campaigns, and they both pose a problem to the primary players since they already have significant amounts of user data.

Yet, the banks have more information about customers than any Internet company ever could. If the financial industry starts muscling into deals, do the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial stand a chance?

international reputation management

About Me 0062

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Making Money on Internet

Banks Cashing In On Data

Privacy, Data, Money = Advantage Banks

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