GE Consumer Finance said Wednesday that it plans to begin issuing American Express cards in the next few months, and that the first will be cobranded with the retail department store giant Dillard's Inc.
The General Electric Co. unit will manage customer relationships and provide customer service, billing, and credit management. The companies would not disclose the financial terms.
The card will run on Amex's network but offer the same perks - including reward points for purchases at the chain and advance notice of sales and other promotions - as a private-label Dillard's card that GE issues.
Both companies said it is too soon to say what the other GE Amex cards will look like. Barry Rodrigues, the executive vice president of Amex's global network services unit, said they will probably include cobranded and non-cobranded cards.
In August 2004, GE bought the assets of Dillard's card-issuing bank subsidiary and signed a 10-year agreement to provide Dillard's customers with credit-card marketing and servicing.
"We have been working on taking the stores to a more upscale tone over the past year or so," said Julie Bull, a spokeswoman for Dillard's. "This cobranding with American Express is a perfect pairing."
Jennifer Schiavone, a spokeswoman for GE, said that at the same time Dillard's was seeking cobranding opportunities, "we were separately working with American Express on a card-issuing alliance."
Because GE already has issuing relationships with Visa U.S.A., MasterCard International, and Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services, it was only natural to add American Express to round out GE's offerings to its partners, she said.
"Adding American Express gives our retail partners more flexibility."
Mr. Rodrigues said it was "logical" for American Express to do business with GE. "They are very strong in the private-label area," he said, "and are moving much more into generally accepted plastic."
Though the companies would disclose little about the new Dillard's card, Ms. Schiavone said that it would have no annual fee.
An October 2004 Supreme Court decision paved the way for Amex to team up with bank card issuers in the United States. Since then American Express has signed on MBNA Corp. (which Bank of America Corp. later bought), Citigroup Inc., and Barclays PLC's Juniper Financial Corp, USAA Federal Savings Bank, and B of A.
American Express dropped some of those issuers from a suit it filed in November 2004 to recover damages allegedly suffered as a result of anticompetitive practices by Visa and MasterCard once the issuers agreed to partner with Amex. GE was not named in that suit.
