Barclaycard Making it Harder to Get Approved?

Via Doctor of Credit, it appears that Barclaycard might be imposing new credit card restrictions. In the post, many data points are shared for Barclaycards and there appears to be a trend of denials for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard® based on too many new accounts. It appears that this rule is acting almost as a hard cut-off and not allowing for exceptions much like the Chase 5/24 Rule. It’s not for sure yet how many new accounts will be allowed but many people speculate this cut-off might be at around 5 or 6 new accounts.

If true this new restriction comes at a time when many issuers are cracking down on application rules. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen Chase adopt the 5/24 rule first for its own issued cards and then even for many co-branded credit cards. They also just dropped a very restrictive rule on Sapphire cards.

American Express imposed once per lifetime rules on business credit cards and also added new language to certain co-branded credit cards to stop “gaming.” Meanwhile, Citibank has put in very restrictive terms for their cards that limit consumers to one bonus per product line for 24 months and Bank of America has made it more difficult to get new cards as well.

I have zero doubt that we’ll be seeing more restrictions come into effect in the coming year, so people will just have to get a little bit more savvy regarding their rewards and work to cash in on some of these while they can.

If this new rule is indeed a rule like 5/24 and is going to be in effect permanently this is a big blow because the Arrival Plus is a great card. It’s sign up bonus offers $500 worth of travel (although this might be going down soon) and that’s very competitive for cards like the Arrival Plus. If a rule like 5/24 goes into effect for this card then that means one less valuable option for many people.

The good news is that it doesn’t look like this rule is being applied to co-branded cards. This means that cards like the AAdvantage Aviator Red would still be available which is great news. (Although recall that the Chase 5/24 rule started out only being applied to Chase branded cards and then was eventually applied to co-branded cards).

The other bit of good news is that there have still been some data points where applicants with many new accounts were approved for the Arrival Plus so there’s still hope that this rule might not be as hard and fast of a rule as the Chase 5/24 Rule. Regardless, I think everyone should be prepared for Barclaycard to start cracking down on other cards and make adjustments to their strategy for the future.