I'm not sure about outside the U.S., but inside you get almost constantly harassed to get store-only credit cards. My wife likes Anne Taylor, and every time she

I'm not sure about outside the U.S., but inside you get almost constantly harassed to get store-only credit cards. My wife likes Anne Taylor, and every time she shops there they ask her if she has an "Anne Taylor" card. This is not a discount card, it's a real credit card, only usable at Anne Taylor stores. Almost every retail clothing store and most department stores seem to want to be in on this kind of thing. Originally, when we were a little dumber and before we bought our first home and started really caring about credit scores, we found our wallets slowly filling up with these cards, not really realizing they were actual credit score altering credit cards. I think it finally dawned on us when our credit score started to be hurt by having too many revolving credit accounts open, and we finally realized what these cards were. So we closed them all, just have 1 each of the three major cards (and we'll be getting rid of our AMEX card once Costco switches over) and our credit scores are amazing and credit management is simple.