The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) share price has climbed back to pre-COVID levels. Can the ANZ share price keep rising?
ANZ share price
ANZ focuses on credit cards instead of BNPL
ANZ has yet to embrace the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) trend, being the only major bank without a BNPL channel.
Instead, the bank has released a campaign offering an $800 gift card and a bonus of 180,000 reward points to open a credit card with no annual fee for the first year.
This credit card offer includes a significant ongoing interest rate of 20.24% with an annual fee of $375 subsequent to the first year.
ANZ’s focus on credit cards appears to be going against the growing shift away from credit cards as outlined in my BNPL vs Paypal (NASDAQ: PYPL). This is food for thought.
My thoughts
According to the Australian Financial Review, there are concerns that the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) may view ANZ’s credit offering in a negative light.
ASIC may view such credit card offerings as problematic if the high-interest rates were, “likely to be inconsistent with the financial situation and needs of a class of consumers“.
It seems like ANZ is climbing an ever-growing mountain in the credit card space.
Whilst it’s important to monitor the credit card arm of ANZ, there are other important ways to analyse ANZ as covered by my colleague, Owen Raszkiewicz.