News

Diners Club to introduce "Plutonium Card"

Charge card competition gets "extreme"


DENVER, Colo. -- Faced with customer migration and falling revenues, Diners Club International announced today that it will introduce a new credit card for wealthy clients. Unlike cards marketed by VISA and American Express to their high-end clients, Diners Club spokesperson Amanda Kelsterton said, "Diners Club is bypassing merely wealthy clients and seeking clients who travel extensively and have extreme purchasing power."

When asked about the name for the card, Ms. Kelsterton said, "We wanted to make an elemental leap over the 'silver,' 'gold,' and 'platinum,' cards that are being offered by our competitors."

A Plutonium Card will carry an annual fee of $6,300 and will earn its users points that can be exchanged for items such as a diamond tiara or an entry level Gulfstream G100 for 5,100,880 points each. At the highest redemption level of 66,030,125 points, a customer can exchange his points for a Scottish castle or a Boeing Business Jet.

Not to be outdone, American Express will soon introduce a new credit card which will carry a "minimum" purchase limit of $115,000 per month. That card, called "The Kryptonite Card," will be available only by invitation to 600 of the wealthiest clients of the company.

Meanwhile CADA Partners, a relative newcomer to the credit card business from Winnipeg, will be following a different path in its search for new customers. Later this year it will begin marketing cards to two heretofore largely untapped groups of customers: the debauched and the smarmy.

Jenna Jameson, spokesperson for the "Sin Card," said that applications for it will be stuffed in the September issue of Hustler magazine and be distributed on the Las Vegas Strip by the same fellows handing out cards for "escort services" and who will be outfitted with "IT'S IN TO SIN" T-shirts.

The "Sleaze Card," on the other hand, will be marketed primarily through advertising in magazines. The first ads should appear in the October issues of Power of Attorney, Today's Politician, and Used Car Salesman Digest.


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