As I first wrote about yesterday, Cathay Pacific is in the process of introducing a credit card in the U.S. market. They provided some hints suggesting this would be announced today, and sure enough the application page for the Cathay Pacific Visa Signature Card is now live.
Continue reading: You Can Now Apply For The New Cathay Pacific Visa Signature Card
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
It also seems worthwhile to note that the website specifically states that free green tier membership in the Marco Polo Club is for the first year only ("members will enjoy a complimentary first year green tier membership in the Marco Polo Club"), which is the same as the Cathay Pacific Elite American Express Card in Hong Kong.
Seems like my amex Elite HK issued card or my Stan Chart AM card is far better than this crap. No thanks !!
My Japan-issued Delta gold Amex card offers 1.25 Skymiles for international (non-yen) purchases, plus unlimited complimentary gold medallion status, so maybe its more common for non-US cards to have these sorts of benefits? I realize Skymiles are near-worthless, but just pointing out the similarities!
Lucky, any idea of online purchases done on foreign country domains will count as int'l spend? Could see a lot of shopping moving to amazon.co.uk, for example, because of this.
@ Devious Schemer -- Interesting thought -- I wonder! Ultimately I'm earning 5x points on Amazon as it stands, so not sure I'd even find that worthwhile. But it very well may.
Lucky,
What about using the points for upgrades? $95 bucks in order to upgrade on a catahy flight or two sounds like a good deal, no?
When I was based in HK, I simply loved the AMEX Cathay card. The downside is that AMEX is not all that widely accepted in HK, but I used it both online and offline at major chains wherever I could.
While I still have a large pool of Asia Miles and am tempted to sign up for this card for overseas use, the initlial up front annual fee of $95 is kind of a deal breaker. It certainly lessens the overall value if you simply want to grind out the 25k sign up bonus, even with the Marco Polo green level.
It's a shame that Cathay couldn't have partnered with a larger bank.
Since I've always used AA for redeeming CX 1St, I'm unsure whether programs transfer to CX. Today, I got in mail offer from USBank for Korean SKYPASS visa w/ 50K signup bonus. I'll take advantage of this cause I know I can transfer points to KAL 🙂