Branding banking cards

When we were children, most of us were really aware of the real use of a credit card. In our idealized and naïve world, it was just a plastic card you swipe or insert in a machine, type a 4-digit code, put it in your wallet and leave the store you were in with your bags. As simple as typing a 4-digit code. Life is cool.

Then we’ve grown up and time has come to own our own cards. And live that awkward moment when your banker asks you “Amex ? Visa ? Mastercard ?”. At this moment, you realize that this banking card is more than just plastic with a “puce”.

You realize that the banking card industry is a huge market shared by few companies – an oligolopoly, then – with a well-defined segmentation. Interesting to explore…
This oligopoly is “handled” by 3 main companies:

                                                         

   

                                                            

Depending on the area, some of those brands are more successful or more adapted than others. It is way easier to use an “Amex” in the United States than in Indonesia, whereas Mastercard is accepted almost everywhere in Indonesia.This market state is a result of long years of offensive promotional campaigns and a relevant branding strategy.

On this blog, our objective is to understand how these brands managed to build a strong and attractive brand image despite the lack of attractiveness of their industry.

In order to understand this, we will go through the branding differentiators of these brands and see how they have achieved their marketing goals and positioning using different incentives and initiatives over the years.