Credit Card Affiliates To Suffer Due to the State of Economy

Credit Card industry has always been a very attractive market for affiliates. People are always looking for credit cards and the pay outs are very good. The market is pretty much saturated in a sense that there are just too many sites competing against each other. Having said that, most affiliates have tried the credit card market at least once in their lives.

But the news is not good if you are in this market. Advanta, which in my book, has the best converting affiliate program has just announced that affiliates can expect to take a hit in approvals due to a change in underwriting. The reason for change? The state of economy! Basically it means that if your CPA is $140, you can expect it to go to $200 or more depending on how tough the new underwriting will be. First the NY State Fiasco and now this. Not a good couple of months for affiliates. Here is an excerpt from Advanta’s e-mail:

As you know, the current economic environment has forced a number of issuers to establish stricter lending criteria. To date Advanta has chosen not to do the same as our focus on high credit quality small business customers has allowed us to maintain the same underwriting standards in recent years. However, as a result of a recent analysis we have decided to make minor underwriting adjustments at this time. The impact of these changes on overall account approval results should be minimal and consistent with typical month-to-month fluctuations.