Costco members, you'd better make sure your checkbook is stocked. For 16 years, the wholesale market has accepted only American Express credit cards, along with cash, checks, and Visa and MasterCard debit cards. On Thursday, AmEx said that it had failed to reach a deal with Costco that "would have made economic sense," and that their unusual exclusive arrangement would end March 31, 2016. AmEx's stock price dropped 6.4 percent on the unexpected news.
American Express also offers a Costco-branded credit card, and those will stop working when the partnership dissolves. What will replace AmEx at the Costco checkout line? Costco isn't saying. Its Canadian operation has partnered with MasterCard and Capital One, and the U.S. unit could pair up exclusively with either one or Visa or Discover, or it could accept more than one credit card, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Political cartoons for November 9Cartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include a ripoff, and the land of opportunity
-
A ‘golden age’ of nuclear powerThe Explainer The government is promising to ‘fire up nuclear power’. Why, and how?
-
Massacre in Darfur: the world looked the other wayTalking Point Atrocities in El Fasher follow decades of repression of Sudan’s black African population
-
Warner Bros. explores sale amid Paramount bidsSpeed Read The media giant, home to HBO and DC Studios, has received interest from multiple buying parties
-
Gold tops $4K per ounce, signaling financial uneaseSpeed Read Investors are worried about President Donald Trump’s trade war
-
Electronic Arts to go private in record $55B dealspeed read The video game giant is behind ‘The Sims’ and ‘Madden NFL’
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fineSpeed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in IntelSpeed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
