Last month, I posted about the transition of the JetBlue credit card from American Express to Barclaycard as we learned firm dates of the transfer which was occurring March 21st. In short, if you were an American Express JetBlue cardholder as of March 18th, the account would be transferred to Barclaycard and you would receive a new Barclaycard version of the JetBlue card. I argued for most people it would make sense to cancel the American Express JetBlue card so you would be eligible for the signup bonus (currently 30k) for the Barclaycard version. It appeared that if you cancelled by March 17th, then you would not receive the Barclaycard version.

However, many readers and clients have reached out to me stating they still received a new Barclaycard JetBlue card in the mail even though they had canceled their American Express JetBlue card in advance of the deadline (which was yesterday). I personally figured it was mistake by Barclaycard as maybe American Express did not provide Barclaycard with an updated list of current cardholders. One of my readers reached out to Barclaycard and got confirmation of what is actually happening. I’ve pasted his comment below of what Barclaycard messaged him via Twitter (bolding mine):

“First, let me assure you that if you have already closed your JetBlue Card from American Express, your account will not be converted to the new JetBlue Rewards MasterCard, issued by Barclaycard. To ensure that our cardmembers would be able to use their new JetBlue Rewards MasterCards immediately when the accounts are transferred to us on March 21, 2016, it was necessary to send the new cards prior to that date and at that time your account was still open with American Express. If you would like to confirm that your JetBlue Card from American Express account is closed, please contact American Express. Barclaycard will not be able to confirm the status of your account until after the conversion on March 21, 2016, but please be reassured that we will not maintain an account for you if you closed your account with American Express prior to March 21st. We hope this information is helpful and are very sorry for the confusion this has caused.”

That explanation makes a lot of sense as I assume Barclaycard wants its new customers to use the cards right away once the American Express cards will not work which is March 20th. Interestingly enough, I cancelled both my wife’s and my JetBlue Amex cards in mid January and we did not receive a Barclaycard version in the mail. While two isolated examples don’t prove anything, it does make me think the message Barclaycard gave my reader above was correct – there was simply a cutoff time, probably sometime in February, in which American Express sent a list of all current cardholders to Barclaycard and Barclaycard sent everyone on that list a card (probably assuming not many people would cancel in that month or so period).

I am very confident that if you cancelled your American Express JetBlue card on or before March 17th, than you have nothing to worry about. Barclaycard has confirmed they sent cards to members whose account very well could have been closed due to the timing of the transition of the JetBlue cards between banks. If you are still skeptical, than I encourage you to call Barclaycard on March 21st to confirm you don’t have an active JetBlue card with them. I would still hold off on applying for the new JetBlue until March 21st when Barclaycard receives the final, active list of cardholders so they do not think you are an active cardholder.