JPMorgan Chase & Co. on June 17 will roll out a second EMV card, expanding its target audience for the higher-technology card to a broader consumer base from elite international business travelers.
The J.P. Morgan Select Visa Signature card, featuring chip-and-signature technology, is within reach of many average consumers with a $95 annual fee, David Porter, Chase Card Services general manager, told PaymentsSource in an interview. Chase is waiving the annual fee for the first year.
The card is Chase’s second offering with EMV technology. On the heels of Wells Fargo & Co.’s April announcement that it plans to issue EMV cards to select customers, Chase said it would roll out the J.P. Morgan Palladium card this month for high-end business travelers (
EMV cards store cardholder information on an embedded chip, making it more difficult to create counterfeit cards usable at the point of sale, which Porter said comprises the bulk of card fraud around the world. Chase’s EMV cards also will be equipped with magnetic stripes for use with traditional U.S. payment terminals.
That the card requires only a signature, instead of a PIN common in many international transactions, “doesn’t matter at all from a U.S. user perspective,” Porter said. “All merchant terminals accept a chip-and-signature card exactly the same as [they accept] a chip-and-PIN card,” he said.
Chase is not planning a direct marketing campaign initially to promote its EMV cards, relying instead on word of mouth, its websites and publicity.
“We think there’s a lot of demand out there for EMV cards among certain types of users to travel abroad, and they’re going to find out about and request it,” Porter said.
Chase also plans to expand EMV technology to other cards in the coming months.
“This isn’t a patentable technology, obviously, but we feel we have a distinct advantage in being one of the first to offer it,” Porter said.
American Express Co. customers, particularly those who are upscale and travel often, are among Chase’s primary targets for its new EMV cards, Porter said. “At the moment, AmEx customers don’t have access to (EMV) technology,” he said.
Chase also sees fresh advantages in exploiting its little-used J.P. Morgan brand, previously confined to its business-to-business products, to generate interest in certain new products targeting higher-end consumers.
The issuer earlier this month announced a $395-a-year cobranded credit card with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. LLC, also under the J.P. Morgan brand (
“We’re opening up the J.P. Morgan brand a bit, making it available to general consumers instead of just the very elite,” Porter said.
The J.P. Select Visa card carries other features common to Chase’s array of annual fee-based rewards cards, including no foreign exchange fee; two points for every $1 spent on travel and one point per dollar spent elsewhere.
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