08 September 2003 12:00am

The crew that's put together the Coles Myer MasterCard (details of which will be made available in about two weeks) insist that market research establishes that reward programs are important drivers of credit card behaviour, and that the interest rate is not very significant. Maybe.

By contrast, Quantium's Tony Davis told the Cards Australasia conference that 80 per cent of credit card holders either never redeemed, or rarely redeemed, credit card rewards. He didn't cite the source of this estimate.

By contrast, the Fly Buys reward program (which is mainly a Coles...