3 ms·

I suspect you're underestimating? A lot of people (around half of Americans if not more) don't carry a balance. I don't know what fraction of them try to extrac

I suspect you're underestimating? A lot of people (around half of Americans if not more) don't carry a balance. I don't know what fraction of them try to extract the most from their cards, but judging from the sheer number of websites that explain what card you should get to maximize which reward and bonus, I'm skeptical that the number of people who pay attention to this is negligible enough that it'd cost companies more to simply close their accounts than to let them go on.

ceejayoz 7y ago
My explanation seems more likely than the credit card companies acting as a money-losing charity towards rewards maximizers, doesn't it?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Yes, but my original explanation seems far more likely than both? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20805156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20805156
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    If an individual's data was worth $500+ annually like that, Intuit would be realizing substantially more revenue from Mint.com.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      It's not the same data? Mint doesn't know where you made each purchase and for how much.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        The only thing Mint's lacking is the geolocation of the individual merchants - something they can garner in a lot of cases from the merchant name. The grocery store I frequent includes a store number in the transaction name, for example. (Mint definitely has the "how much" bit - they've got each transaction individually, including the amount.) On the flip side, Mint has all the rest of the credit card data for the person (across potentially many different cards and card networks), savings and checking accounts, brokerage accounts, mortgages, car loans, student loans, and tax returns if you use TurboTax. I think that balances out the equation pretty handily - that amount of linked, collated data should easily be worth more than a single CC can garner.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        Ohh, sorry, you're talking about Mint -- somehow I confused it with Credit Karma. Yes, they have transaction history and all that from across cards. I agree, it should be pretty valuable for Intuit. What indicates to you that it's not (or not as much as you expect)?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        > What indicates to you that it's not (or not as much as you expect)? Intuit's a public company, making both their revenue and the number of Mint users publicly available. They're not making anywhere near what they'd need to make off their extensive data holdings to make your theory work.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        What I meant was, could you cite the numbers and math you are arriving at that tell you this? The 10-K I'm seeing says they make around $200M/year from desktop TurboTax and $2.2B from Mint and other services, and that's just with 20 million Mint users. That seems plenty to me.
astura 7y ago
>sheer number of websites that explain what card you should get to maximize which reward and bonus These sites are mostly blogspam that push referral links.

ceejayoz 7y ago

My explanation seems more likely than the credit card companies acting as a money-losing charity towards rewards maximizers, doesn't it?

mehrdadn 7y ago
Yes, but my original explanation seems far more likely than both? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20805156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20805156
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  If an individual's data was worth $500+ annually like that, Intuit would be realizing substantially more revenue from Mint.com.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    It's not the same data? Mint doesn't know where you made each purchase and for how much.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The only thing Mint's lacking is the geolocation of the individual merchants - something they can garner in a lot of cases from the merchant name. The grocery store I frequent includes a store number in the transaction name, for example. (Mint definitely has the "how much" bit - they've got each transaction individually, including the amount.) On the flip side, Mint has all the rest of the credit card data for the person (across potentially many different cards and card networks), savings and checking accounts, brokerage accounts, mortgages, car loans, student loans, and tax returns if you use TurboTax. I think that balances out the equation pretty handily - that amount of linked, collated data should easily be worth more than a single CC can garner.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Ohh, sorry, you're talking about Mint -- somehow I confused it with Credit Karma. Yes, they have transaction history and all that from across cards. I agree, it should be pretty valuable for Intuit. What indicates to you that it's not (or not as much as you expect)?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        > What indicates to you that it's not (or not as much as you expect)? Intuit's a public company, making both their revenue and the number of Mint users publicly available. They're not making anywhere near what they'd need to make off their extensive data holdings to make your theory work.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        What I meant was, could you cite the numbers and math you are arriving at that tell you this? The 10-K I'm seeing says they make around $200M/year from desktop TurboTax and $2.2B from Mint and other services, and that's just with 20 million Mint users. That seems plenty to me.

astura 7y ago

>sheer number of websites that explain what card you should get to maximize which reward and bonus These sites are mostly blogspam that push referral links.