Costco may soon start accepting something other than American Express credit cards at its American warehouse club stores.
Bosses dropped a co-branding deal with AmEx in Canada earlier this year and are now apparently also looking to make the same move in the U.S., reports Bloomberg.
Sources say that the retailer is currently soliciting bids for a new issuer and payments network for its U.S. cards.
Capital One, MasterCard and current provider New York-based AmEx are all in the running, according to CNBC.
It comes just 10 months since co-founder and former CEO James Sinegal said that the single-card arrangement helped “maintain security” against breaches suffered by other retailers.
And it follows the Canadian deal — which in September saw CostCo dropping AmEx and reaching a deal with Capital One and MasterCard for its co-branded credit cards from 2015 onwards.
Washington-based Costco will stop accepting all AmEx cards in Canada from Jan. 1 after negotiations between the two companies broke down.
“The change in Canada gives us reason to believe this is a sign of things to come for the U.S. relationship,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Jason Arnold said in a research note September.
“If the U.S. indeed follows, it certainly will represent a significant relationship loss for AmEx,” he added.
Before AmEx, Costco — which has 468 stores in the U.S. and 88 in Canada — had a similar deal with Discover Financial Services’s card, reports Consumerist.
Online buys can be paid for with other card networks. Neither Costco nor American Express have commented on the claims.
