Synchrony to issue credit cards for home shopping channel

Synchrony Financial, which recently lost a key partnership with Walmart, will begin issuing credit cards for the home shopping channel HSN under an agreement announced Thursday.

Under the deal, Synchrony will start offering private-label credit cards for HSN in August 2019, according to a Synchrony press release. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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HSN, formerly known as the Home Shopping Network, currently partners with Comenity Capital Bank to issue credit cards to its customers. Comenity Capital is a banking subsidiary of Alliance Data Systems Corp. in Plano, Texas.

The deal announced Thursday deepens Synchrony’s relationship with HSN’s parent company, Qurate Retail Group. Qurate also owns the home shopping channel QVC and the e-commerce site Zulily, both of which already offer credit cards in partnership with Synchrony.

Synchrony also announced that it has agreed to a multi-year extension of its agreements with QVC and Zulily.

“We continue to invest in data analytics and mobile technology to help our partners meet customers’ shopping needs wherever they are — online, in-store, through their TV and more,” Tom Quindlen, an executive vice president at Synchrony, said in the press release.

Synchrony is seeking to rebound from the loss of its partnership with the retail giant Walmart, which accounted for more than 10% of the total interest and fees on loans that Synchrony collected last year. In July, Walmart announced an exclusive credit card partnership with Capital One Financial.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based chain later filed a lawsuit against Synchrony, which fueled doubts about the likelihood that the Stamford, Conn.-based credit card company will renew a partnership with Walmart-owned Sam’s Club that expires in 2021.

“We’ve built out a ton of capabilities, and honestly I view Walmart as an outlier,” Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

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