AMEX Wants iTunes Biz - Sets Example for CUs Posted by AVCU on 1:16 PM

The 2/16 issue of NetBanker asks readers how much the average American Express card-holder spends in the iTunes store each month? The answer is - a lot. But how often do you go to iTunes and change your default card? Never. Is it worth $5 to a card issuer to have their card powering an iTunes account? American Express thinks so.


The article sights the benefit of the added stickiness that frequent Apple purchases give to the issuer's card. So, AMEX created a campaign to get people to switch their default iTunes payment card:
Earn a free 5-song download credit by making an iTunes purchase with an Amex card between 2/10 and 3/15. iTunes accounts for about 70% of all digital downloads of music worldwide. With its play to get its cardholders to use tied in, AMEX is tapping into interchange derived from massive amounts of downloads from iTunes. So far in its existence, iTunes downloads total:

• 450 million TV shows
• 100 million films
• 12 billion tunes
• 35 million books
• 6.5 billion apps (in apps alone, that’s one for every person on the planet!)

AMEX is on to something here, and Filene Institute's Mark Meyer thinks so to. In a recent post the Filene CEO postulates what might happen if credit unions did similarly. Interchange caps or not, that's a whole lot of new business for credit unions.