Keynova Group, the principal competitive intelligence source for digital financial services firms, today announced the results of the Q4 2022 edition of its semi-annual Credit Card Scorecard. Bank of America and Discover tied with top honors for their digital user experiences, both ranking first in Overall Score in Keynova Group’s competitive evaluation of the 10 leading U.S. credit card issuers. The Scorecard’s findings show engaging new credit card products and streamlined application-to-spend processes are being coupled with digital tools to ease the work involved with managing credit card accounts and transactions.

“With the holiday shopping season in full swing, many consumers are doubling or tripling their typical number of monthly transactions, so tapping into their credit cards’ transaction history and security features is even more critical,” said Beth Robertson, managing director, Keynova Group. “Credit card issuers have been adding additional consumer-facing security elements while also working to make digital account management more user friendly so consumers can easily confirm transactions for purchased or returned items, assess their rewards earnings, and monitor their spending.”

Key Findings:

Credit Card Incentives Drive Engagement

Credit card issuers continue to innovate with inventive card products and creative benefits, as well as card product comparisons and tools to help consumers identify the optimal card to suit their spending habits. Leading card issuers now offer rich incentives of up to 17X rewards on targeted spending, novel rewards categories such as rent or digital wallet spend, high-value point transfers to other loyalty programs, and generous welcome bonus rewards for new cardholders. As these rewards can add up during the holiday shopping season, 70% of Scorecard issuers now provide tools to help customers estimate the rewards they might earn using a specific card. Digital applications are also being improved with benefits such as no impact to a consumer’s credit score to apply or instant spending for approved applicants.

Card Issuers Augment Digital Security and Transaction Management

Issuers are continuing to identify new opportunities to help users enhance their digital security and facilitate account and transaction management tasks. To help cardholders monitor their spending, 60% of issuers identify merchants that are set up to receive recurring payments from a cardholder, and Chase further identifies all other merchants that may be storing a customer’s card number and payment information. Half of the issuers now pinpoint organizations with data-sharing access to credit card accounts and enable cardholders to digitally revoke a third party’s access. Bank of America provides a personalized list of actions that cardholders can take to improve their digital account security such as setting up alerts or two-factor authentication.

Helping cardholders manage their transaction activity, U.S. Bank’s mobile app Smart Assistant with voice activation is the first to enable cardholders to request a list of transactions by merchant or by dollar amount. Most Scorecard issuers also now enable transaction dispute details to be pre-filled directly from the online or mobile transaction summary page, so a cardholder does not have to re-enter information already available to the issuer. As recurring charges can be overlooked, especially when account activity is high, 30% of issuers notify customers when an irregular recurring payment is identified.

Digital Wallet Content Promotes Secure and Contactless Payment Options

With an increasing number of consumers using their mobile devices for holiday shopping, digital wallets facilitate payment without the complication of entering card numbers during checkout. Digital wallets can also be ideal for online and point-of-sale purchases as contactless transactions are further enhanced by the tokenization of card numbers and CVVs to help mitigate fraud. Sixty percent of Scorecard issuers encourage use of digital wallets and other contactless forms of payment by providing related educational content directly from their site’s homepage or authenticated landing page. And 40% of the issuers - Bank of America, Capital One, Discover, and Wells Fargo – assist cardholders in managing their digital wallets by providing direct access to wallets from the account summary page.

About the Credit Card Scorecard

Keynova Group’s semi-annual Credit Card Scorecard objectively evaluates the cardholder acquisition and servicing experience for consumers using the digital channels of 10 leading U.S. credit card issuers. With more than two decades of experience benchmarking online and mobile financial services, Keynova Group’s Scorecard identifies best practices and trends in the competitive landscape for consumer credit card issuing. The Credit Card Scorecard reviews the digital channels supporting credit card products for issuers American Express, Bank of America, Barclays U.S., Capital One, Chase, Citibank, Discover, PNC, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. For more information about Keynova Group’s Q2 2022 Credit Card Scorecard, please visit https://www.keynovagroup.com/scorecards/#credit-cards-and-lending.