love it so much
I’m curious why black is so associated with premier status. Is it because of the Amex black card being so synonymous with wealth back in the day?
Yes I think it’s definitely that, the colour black is culturally associated with wealth e.g. black tie events, black limos, luxury etc. But I think Amex kicked off the whole culture around the ‘black card’ with Centurion.
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In my opinion, no body tops the OG First Direct card for black minimalism. Shame they’ve nerfed it now.
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Their Gold credit card always felt a bit fancy too, Black with Gold numbers on it
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New Lloyds Bank Credit Card - Lloyds Ultra Credit: Lloyds Bank - Credit Card Application
Earn 1% cashback on card purchases for the first 12 months from your account opening
Earn 0.25% cashback after that
We didn’t just call it Ultra because it sounds cool
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No foreign exchange fees.
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No monthly account fee.
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No cash withdrawal fees.
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It’s basically just Barclaycard rewards with a boosted Cashback in the first 12 months
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Is there a reason UK cards give such poor cashback rates? I just opened new US and UK cards (well, swapped my old cards for new cards, really) - my new UK card (Natwest Premier Reward Black) gives 0.5% on everything, which seems pretty high for the UK. Meanwhile my new US card gives 1.5% on everything as standard, and more on certain categories…
I believe it is due to an EU law where banks can only charge up to 0.3% of the transaction. AMEX has an exception but only on the non co branded cards.
Yes, it’s due to higher interchange fees in the US, they make more from each transaction so can afford to give more back to customers.
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Gotcha, that makes sense!
This looks much nicer than the Wallet version
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I guess the platinum card is still a ‘premier‘ card but is a lighter colour. J.P. Morgan’s Reserve card is also a silver colour. The bulk of premier and even elite cards do seem to be black or darker colours though.
The Amex Centurion Card was created because of a rumor that an Amex black card existed I believe so it may not be the main reason but I would imagine it’s popularity contributed to other premier cards being made black.
Shades of silver/white and black seem to be popular for premier cards possibly just because they want to stand out from standard bank cards which often have friendlier and brighter colours.
I’m guessing they kept the ‘Barclays’ on the top left so that it’s easily identifiable in Wallet.
To be really pedantic, this was the original FD debit card:
I still think the current one is pretty classy apart from the variable quality.
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It was a really nice card for the time, pity about the horrible green switch logo.
I remember paying for a train ticket at Leicester shortly after FD opened. Can’t remember whether it was Switch or cheque but the ticket guy took a lot of persuading to accept it. “What’s this? Never ‘eard of ’em. You got cash mate?”
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Old school equivalent of trying to use a Monzo card on an airline.
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I remember my Dad had one of the original FD debit cards. Think he moved over from Virgin One about 2000 or so - at the time everyone thought it was some sort of rich persons bank! Because the card was black.
Dad loved the telephone service and to this day it’s the same.
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