Is Barclays Targeting A New Audience With Their Credit Cards?

by joeheg

Barclays is a credit card issuer that doesn’t get much attention. There are several reasons for this, such as being notoriously stingy on approvals if you have no credit history with them and have recently applied for other cards. Once you’re a customer, it’s often easier to get a second card from them, but they make you wait a while before applications (6 months to a year, from what I’ve read).

Even though they offer many different co-brand credit cards, they’ll only let you have two or three (maybe four) cards open at any one time.

We currently have the Arrival+ (which is not available for new applications) and American Airlines Aviator Red cards and it’s been several years since our last application.

The current 60,000 points sign-up bonus for the JetBlue Plus card was too tempting to pass up. I knew there was a chance for rejection but I had to give it a try.

It was while filling out the application I noticed Barclay’s attempt to capture a very specific market segment.

Arms Dealers

Arms Dealer

Don’t believe me? It’s right there on the application.

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Some of the choices on this drop-down menu are extremely specific like “ATM Owner/Operator” or “Convenience Store Mgr/Owner.” Are there that many people who fall into those categories that they deserve their own headings?

I can imagine the meeting where they were narrowing down occupations to include and who was the one who said: “Shouldn’t we include arms dealers?”

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

Cover Photo: “Barclays” by Insider Monkey is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

5 comments

DaninMCI March 3, 2020 - 4:28 pm

This is obviously aimed (pardon the pun) at Retail Gun Dealers/Stores.

Reply
joeheg March 3, 2020 - 4:49 pm

I’m sure that’s what they meant. Maybe it’s one of those British-American language mixups.

Reply
Christian March 3, 2020 - 5:21 pm

Hey, the Lord of War needs a card just like everyone else. It could’ve been worse: they could have listed narco-terrorist as an acceptable occupation. It’s great that you spotted this.

Reply
Carl WV March 3, 2020 - 7:42 pm

I also couldn’t resist the JetBlue offer, I got instant approval and just finished the spend in about a week. I also have the Wyndham card with them (old one that has the 15K anniversary bonus).

Are you saying how you did with them, or did I miss that?

Reply
joeheg March 5, 2020 - 12:45 am

No spoilers. Check out this morning to find out if I was approved.

Reply

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