Wells Fargo losing millions on Bilt card, the ball drops on Curve and online passport renewal is kind of back (Saturday Selection)

Online passport renewal is back again (sort of), the ball drops on Curve in the US and the Bilt card is costing Wells Fargo $10 million per month. All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to each article are embedded in the titles).

Online passport renewal is back again! Or is it?

For folks in the US, Online passport renewal is like one of those desert mirages that looks like it’s just over the next rise, but never actually gets any closer. It was announced a couple of years ago, in the midst of the skyrocketing, pandemic, revenge-travel-fueled wait times that folks with manual renewals were experiencing. But after that announcement, we waited, and waited. Then, on Wednesday (and with little fanfare), the State Department finally launched its public online renewal site. Before you get too excited, it’s being called a “beta test.” In order to participate, you have to meet a laundry-list of qualifications and your passport can’t have been issued less than nine years ago or longer than fifteen years ago. In addition, there’s no way of knowing exactly when you’ll be able actually apply online. The landing page says, “You may not be able to start your application on the day of your choice. The system will open for a limited midday eastern time window each day, and will close once we reach our limit for the day.” Turns out, that “limited” time has been very limited. You might even call it exclusive. So much so, that some folks have complained that on certain days it appears to only be open for a matter of minutes.

Curve throws a curveball to customers in the US

When the waitlist for the Curve card was first announced back in 2021, it set Frequent Miler hearts aflutter…it sounded like the magic key to a happy marriage that we had only dreamt of previously. It was meant o be a “front” card that would effectively act as a one-card wallet. You could add multiple backing credit cards, tell it when to use which one, and even go back in time to reassign charges if they were misapplied. If everything went as planned, you could simply give this one card to player 2 and know that every possible category bonus was covered. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go as planned. The initial launch was buggier than a Florida backyard. Charges went to the wrong card or were declined. Purchases made with a Curve-loaded card outside of Curve showed up in the app and were routed to another card. I had charges go to an unsupported card that wasn’t even in the app (but which I had tried to add initially). It was wacky.

That said, things continued to improve and, even though Visa and Amex were never supported as promised, it seemed to work well with Mastercard, making it ideal for the “quintessential Citi-wallet.” For a time, it even let Bilt cardholders turn every day into Rent Day by going back in time and changing charges to the first of the month so that they received double points. What fun. Alas, it appears that midnight has struck and the Curve ball has dropped. A couple of weeks ago, the developers announced (via the linked Reddit post above) that they needed to to “pause the Curve Beta program currently offered in the US due to the termination of your Curve Credit Card account with Hatch Bank, our sponsor bank, while we integrate with a new sponsor bank.” Curve says that cardholders shouldn’t fear, it will be back with something even better soon. We’ll see.

Wells Fargo is losing $10 million per month on Bilt

Bilt Rewards has been the flashy, new program on the block over the last couple of years, allowing folks to earn points on rent, awarding unheard-of transfer bonuses to a variety of partners and irking large swathes of the points and miles community with its steady refusal to attach a welcome offer to its credit card. In fact, many of Bilt’s promotions have been so good that it’s become a common refrain to predict its demise, “once the venture capital runs out.” Turns out, Bilt is doing just fine. Last week, the Wall Street Journal dropped an article full of interesting tidbits about the relationship between Bilt and the bank that backs its credit card, Wells Fargo. Evidently, Bilt inked an incredibly favorable deal with Wells and the bank is now paying the company 0.8 cents for every dollar spent on rent transactions and $200 for every new cardholder that Bilt acquires. No wonder the transfer bonuses have been so good. Wells, on the other hand, is supposedly losing around $10 million/month. While dropping $100 million+ per year on a new product might seem crazy, for a bank with a cool $83 billion in annual revenue, it’s something that approaches a rounding error. Nevertheless, given all of the salacious details that the WSJ knew about the Bilt/Wells Fargo relationship, it appears to me that someone riding the old stagecoach has their feathers ruffled. The two companies have a contract that runs through 2029, so I imagine Bilt will continue to do quite well for itself in the near future, regardless of whatever additional leaks might spring from the Wells. DOC summarizes the article in the post linked above and you can also listen to Greg and Nick chat about it on the most recent Frequent Miler on the Air.

Alaska ordered to pay Virgin $160M for not using brand

Ever since Richard Branson tried to strangle Greg the Frequent Miler in the commissary of his remote island prison, we’ve known that he wasn’t a sir man to be trifled with. Now, Alaska Airlines knows it as well. When Alaska acquired Virgin America in 2016, the company assumed all of VA’s liabilities. This included a deal that Virgin America had made with regular Virgin in 2014 that agreed to pay an annual trademark fee of $8 million until 2039 for the privilege of throwing that logo up on the tale of its aircraft. Once Alaska retired the VA brand, it stopped paying the fee to Virgin, saying that it was silly to pay for a brand that they didn’t even use. Sir Branson disagreed…and took Alaska to court to get his imperial pound of flesh. To no one’s surprise, he was successful, and Alaska now has to pay for the Virgin America trademark for 20 years, or $160 million total. Now Alaska knows what Richard meant when he said “If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch buy a new my airline.“

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