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American Express goes old school

American Express (AXP) will be happy to see February go.

This month, the credit card provider lost a lucrative partnership deal with Costco (COST)...faced reports the same would happen with JetBlue (JBLU)…and was defeated in a Justice Department anti-trust lawsuit over the company’s exclusivity rules with retailers.

So in response, AMEX is employing a “back to the future” strategy; focusing on higher-income customers by adding new benefits to its Premier Rewards Gold Card.

Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task thinks that makes perfect sense.

“Membership has its privileges. That was their slogan,” he notes. “That’s what AMEX was built on-- that it’s exclusive, that you have to be a member and it did appeal to that more-affluent American and that’s how they made their bones. They kind of got away from that, and I think now they’re going back to their roots.”

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Starting in June, Gold Card members will get more rewards points for restaurant purchases, $100 credit for airline fees such as baggage charges, personalized travel service and no foreign transaction fees for spending in other countries.

Task feels the company certainly needs a way to boost its fortunes.

“They have to do something because the stock has had a nice week but it’s had a pretty rough go from the start of this year,” he points out. “They have to turn something around and hopefully this does it for the shareholders.”

American Express shares have lost more than 10% of their value in 2015.

Yahoo Senior Columnist Michael Santoli adds that American Express only has itself to blame for the struggles it has had.

“Amex did this to itself in large part because on top of Gold they put Platinum and then Black,” he says. “If you kind of democratize the Gold Card, which they did over the years and every other issuer-- you had a Chase (JPM) Gold Card for example and everybody called themselves Gold or Platinum-- I think it all got blurred.”

However, Santoli believes American Express still has something of an aura about it.

“They have that prestige status on some level. You do still get better perks,” he says. “It’s less about what my rate is and how much credit they’re going to give me. It’s a little more about that cache.”

But Santoli feels it’s not like it used to be when “Membership has its privileges” put AMEX on a level all its own.

“I think they’re just another player now,” he says.

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