The store credit card in your wallet and the Air Miles in your account could both lead back to Alliance Data. The investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe assembled the company in 1996. It combined a retail credit card bank with a transaction processing business, then added the Canadian Air Miles program soon after. By June 2001 it was a quiet giant serving millions of shoppers. It went public that month in a weak market, months after the dot-com crash.

Data From Every Swipe

Alliance Data bet that retailers would hand their loyalty and credit card programs to a specialist. Store cards and rewards programs produced detailed data about what customers bought. Alliance Data used that data to let retailers market more precisely. It also earned interest and fees on the cards it issued. Later it added the Epsilon marketing business. Its programs reached millions of households through familiar store brands.

Breaking Into Pieces

Alliance Data priced its IPO at $12 a share in June 2001 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It grew for years through acquisitions and joined the S&P 500. In 2019 it sold Epsilon to Publicis for $4 billion. In 2021 it spun off its loyalty business, including Air Miles. In 2022 the remaining card business renamed itself Bread Financial, which still trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

Cover: A Study for the Card Players, Paul Cezanne. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for card players (loyalty and credit cards).