I felt as if I were in a luxury hotel suite, with soft lighting, marble countertops, comfortable seating, and parquet floors creating an opulent atmosphere. A lavishly decorated platter caught my eye, laden with exquisite food.
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03-10, 2025"That's a seafood tower, as a welcome amenity, and there's caviar, and you can also see Champagne, for guests to enjoy," explained Dana Pouls, head of Chase Sapphire Lounge benefits at JPMorgan Chase. She was giving me a tour of Chase's newly opened Sapphire Lounge at New York's LaGuardia Airport.
These days, waiting for a flight can be such an experience—provided you can afford the $550 (about £433) annual fee for a credit card that grants lounge access. Once inside Chase's LaGuardia lounge, you can also opt to pay up to $3,000 for a few hours of private suite service.
This is just part of a global "arms race" between credit card companies that you may be unaware of—they are competing to build bigger, better, and bolder airport lounges to outdo their rivals. While most of us can't get into these lounges, experts say we're almost certainly helping to pay for them, and these costs aren't cheap.
"Yes, it's an arms race, and they're getting more and more extraordinary," said Clint Henderson, news editor at the travel and flying website The Points Guy. "From what we understand, each of these lounges costs tens of millions of dollars to build. For example, the Atlanta Centurion Lounge [owned by American Express], I believe they spent about $100 million to build that."
Airport lounges aren't a new concept, and credit card issuers have long partnered with airlines to offer branded credit cards with lounge access. But now, credit card issuers are building their own lounges to directly attract cardholders—and potential new customers. JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Capital One, they're all now in the lounge—and lifestyle—business.
For American Express, this includes opening a high-end lounge in midtown Manhattan. Its Centurion New York location is on the 55th floor of a skyscraper, offering stunning views of New York through floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as fine dining and a private bar. It's designed for Centurion cardholders—a card that requires a $10,000 initiation fee, plus a $5,000 annual fee. And getting the card requires an invitation.
"We're not just a credit card company or a charge card company, we're a lifestyle brand, giving you special access to concerts, giving you access to restaurants," said Audrey Hendley, president of American Express Travel.
Credit card issuers have even moved into a 21st-century mainstay—coffee shops. Capital One owns Capital One Cafés—now you can find baristas inside banks. Their Georgetown, Washington, D.C., location has all the classic hallmarks of a trendy coffee shop—exposed ductwork, exposed brick, barista coffee machines.
The only direct sign you might be in a bank is the neon Capital One logo on the wall and their branded touchscreens. Look closely, and you might spot casually dressed people who look like customers but are actually what Capital One calls "ambassadors," there to welcome you and help you with all your banking needs. Anyone can use the cafés, but with a Capital One card, you get a discount on your drinks.
"We're creating a showroom for our products," said Sean Rowley, head of Capital One Cafés. "For customers to come in and see Capital One in action, to touch it, to smell it, even to taste it through our cafés. And watching them walk out, as you know, raving fans and advocates for us, that's the return we're looking for."
These words don't sound like what you'd normally hear from a financial institution. Dan Bennett is head of behavioral science at advertising giant Ogilvy. He says it's all about how brands tap into people's perceptions of themselves and others.
"Yes, it's a piece of plastic with a chip in it that holds your money, but it actually gives you a social status," he said. "It says something about who you are. It can make you feel superior. Credit card companies aren't just building rooms in airports, they're building a sense of self. What's amazing is that financial services companies have managed to look at some deep human drivers and then build experiences around them. That's why they're so successful, because they've managed to find psychological levers to pull, rather than just looking at the world in a rational way."
But Lulu Wang, assistant professor of finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, says that even if you never get into these places, you're ultimately still paying for them. She studies how the credit card payment system works. She points out that it's [more expensive for retailers, bars, and restaurants to accept credit cards than debit cards, external link](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/08/credit-card-fees-small-businesses/), because they incur higher interchange fees.
Professor Wang says merchants may raise prices to cover the extra costs incurred by people using credit cards. "We generally think that firms face higher costs, they will pass a pretty substantial portion of that cost onto consumers," she explained. "If we impose all these costs on the merchants, eventually it's going to be a cost that all of us as consumers bear. The wealthy can use high merchant fee, high reward credit cards, and then the rest of society has to bear that cost."
Regardless of who's bearing the costs, the direction forward is clear. As credit card issuers compete with each other, more and more lounges and lifestyle experiences are on the way. This arms race for your credit card loyalty isn't slowing down.
