Barclays and Argos Agree To Sign Up For New 50/50 Credit Card

Jumping on the bandwagon of UK credit cards with well-known store outlet associations, Argos Retails Group have announced that they have signed up with Barclays Bank Plc to create the new Argos credit card.

The new 50/50 joint venture between Argos and Barclays will cover 650 Argos stores as well as 200 Homebase out of town stores. In addition to providing UK credit card services, the new joint venture will also offer loan products to customers of the well-known chain of catalogue stores and the garden and home retailer.

While it might be easy to understand how this new joint venture company can provide a boost to Barclays’ flagging credit card and consumer finance business, given that both Argos and Homebase have pre-existing store card operations the benefits to both of these leading UK retailers joining up to the new joint venture are less clear. Clarifying this, Terry Duddy, Chief Executive of Argos Retail Group, said, “This joint venture will enable the future development of new additional lending products that will continue to enhance the choice, value and convenience that we [ARG] offer our customers.”

At the same time, GUS, the parent company of ARG, have clarified that all existing Argos and Homebase store card operations will continue as normal and will not be impacted by the new joint venture agreement between Argos and Barclays. However, being as the operations of the new joint venture will be in direct competition with the existing Argos and Homebase store cards, it is hard to see how either the operation of the new joint venture or the long-standing store cards would not be adversely affected by the presence of the other.

It remains to be seen then whether or not both the new credit cards and the existing store cards can continue to operate together harmoniously. Any problems ahead however will unlikely we on the part of Barclays as they already have pre-existing credit card joint venture agreements in place with House of Fraser and Sky and so are both familiar with and used to consumer credit relationship tie-up with leading retailers and service providers.

So, the next time you’re in either Argos or Homebase and decide that now is the right time to be doing some shopping or decorations to the home, make sure you check-out the new UK credit card and loan products being offered by the joint venture to see how competitive their promotion and rates are when compared to the competition.

Richard Smith
21st August 2006

More UK Credit Card News
Try our feed