There has been enough antitrust scrutiny in recent years where I am very interested to see how far this goes. There's a very real chance the sale won't complete and 6 months from now nothing will have changed.
I don’t think the parties are significantly different in this regard anymore. There’s mistrust of large corporations on both sides.
Recall that the Trump administration tried (and ultimately failed) to block the AT&T and Time Warner merger. And then there was the antitrust complaint against Google.
I'm not a fan. They like to play the game of "unlimited credit limit". Until you spend more than your secret credit limit that is, in fact, not unlimited. this was years ago, but I was unable to get them to tell me what the secret limit was until I tried to make a large purchase and they blocked it. then we had to play a stupid game of hypotheticals. If I were to attempt to make a single purchase of $75k next week, would it go through? What about $100k?
If this leads to CapitalOne switching my cards to Discover, I’ll be leaving CapitalOne. I don’t want to have to question if places I’m going will accept my card, or have to carry a backup Visa card.
I also can’t think about the Discover card without hearing Peter Griffin[1] in the back of my head.
I first signed up with them specifically to get a card for international travel. If that becomes less reliable, or I have to check a website before I go anywhere, the value proposition drops a lot.
I looked at their international site (linked from the one you posted). It says the place I’m going in a month has high acceptance, but other countries right next door do not (within the EU). There are also a lot of notes to just try it and see if it works. That implies I should have a backup and I won’t be able to tell before trying to buy something based on stickers at the register. If that’s the case, I’d rather make the backup my main card, so I don’t need to do that dance and get rejected.
In India it seemed like Mastercard was the most widely accepted, so even Visa wasn’t everywhere I want to be. But I think Visa, with a Mastercard backup, is probably the best bet for most of the world. Discover feels unnecessary. I’m not looking to have a ton of credit cards.
Make sure no foreign transaction fees for any cards. I haven’t had much luck with discover and international travel. I got one for 5% rotating rewards, no ^ fees, and rarely use it but kept it in case I need a credit score.
If you travel internationally you need both Visa and Mastercard, I agree.
Personally I feel everyone should have 3 cards, a Visa a Mastercard, and one other (any network). And make sure they are from at least two different banks, just in case a fraud alert on one card, shuts down the sibling card from the same bank.
For best safety keep the 3rd card at home, and rotate it every month or two (don't go over 3 months though) with one of the other cards - that way if your wallet is stolen you still have something available at home.
This completely ignores how businesses treat Discover & American Express card holders.
Sure, your average coffee shop with a square stand that pays an inflated flat percentage rate does not care what card you tap, but any small business that that is using a payment processor that provides interchange pricing or qualified pricing is directly affected by experiencing double the cost to process your average discover or American Express card, and many will happily tell you they much prefer you to pay with cash, failing that debit, then Visa or MasterCard credit, due to the cost of processing.
This merger also affects other oddball cards like JCB and Diners Club Card that ride on Discover's rails.
One other aspect of this is Visa and MasterCard have been getting crazy with the interchange fees on their most premium credit card types, making American Express and Discover's standard rates look reasonable in comparison: https://www.creditdonkey.com/interchange-rates.html#visa
> many will happily tell you they much prefer you to pay with cash, failing that debit, then Visa or MasterCard credit, due to the cost of processing
This has never happened to me. There have been places that don’t take Amex outright (not many these days) but none have ever said they prefer anything else, from huge big box stores to small farmers market merchants.
Capital One is also rumored to be one of the top contenders to replace Goldman Sachs as the bank behind the Apple Card. I wonder if this is related to that.
I doubt Apple Card would change to being Discover rather than Mastercard since Discover is accepted by, what, two retailers?
I would prefer if Apple switched to Visa since my other visa cards gradually got converted to the less useful Mastercard (supported in the USA, but fewer other places).
Discover acceptance is near-universal (at least in the US) as of the late 2000s/early 2010s. After they won a major lawsuit against Visa/Mastercard in the early 2000s for their exclusionary policies, acceptance rolled out widely and the memes about the card are mostly a thing of the past.
I've used a Discover card for 99.9% of purchases with extensive travel across the US for the past 15 years or so. Very occasionally a place won't accept it, but it's become a rather surprising thing to encounter.
While switching to Discover would make Apple Card less useful as a travel credit card and budgeting tool, it would still be useful as a "store credit card" (monthly installments for buying a new iPhone).
And it wouldn't be the first time Apple has integrated with Discover -- for example Apple Cash in Wallet used to use Discover prior to 2022 or so.
Discover is riskier internationally but in the US it’s really not uncommon - like Amex you might not want it to be your only option but that backup Visa won’t get much use.
* Pending the feds allowing this to go through
There has been enough antitrust scrutiny in recent years where I am very interested to see how far this goes. There's a very real chance the sale won't complete and 6 months from now nothing will have changed.