Group-buying site LivingSocial plans to release its own credit card for US subscribers. The card will be offered in partnership with JPMorgan Chase and Visa, will have no annual fee, and will include short-term funding for merchants.
“Small and medium-sized local businesses will never be able to have their own credit card or loyalty program. We will be able to bring them the benefits of that,”says LivingSocial’s CFO John Bax.
LivingSocial credit card holders will earn 10 ‘DealBuck’ credits if they make 10 purchases in a month, which can be used as payment for LivingSocial’s deals. The Washington, DC-based company will announce other details of the card’s features nearer to the launch date.
LivingSocial will hope that card encourages consumers to return to merchants after initial deals, something that some analysts cite as a concern for the daily deals sector. LivingSocial has hinted at plans to expand further into customer portals in the past in order to make up for heavy losses within its daily deals business.
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