Event Reminders

This is the week! My webinar with Marqeta is this Thursday: Payment Infrastructure Lessons from Scaled Businesses on Thursday, March 19 at 11 a.m. PDT.

Next week, join me with Synctera for Cards That Compete: Building Credit Cards That People Actually Want on Tuesday, May 24, at 10 a.m. PDT.

Ford’s New Visa

Automotive cobrand is a difficult problem. Over the course of my five-and-a-half years writing CardsFTW, the GM cobrand portfolio was acquired by Goldman Sachs and sold again to Barclaycard. Both sales resulted in mediocre cards. (See CardsFTW #3, where I referred to Ford’s existing program as “lackluster,” and CardsFTW #65.)

Well, hope springs eternal, as Ford and Bread Financial announced a new agreement covering cobrand cards and installment programs.

Billy Bronco and Molly Mustang

The new Ford Rewards Visa (creative naming at its best) is one of those cards that feels like only confused consumers will think it’s a good deal. The card includes:

• Bonus of 15,000 Points (~$75 redemption value) when you make a purchase within the first 90 days of account opening
• $100 statement credit after spending $1,500 within the first 90 days after opening your card
• Up to 16 Points per $1 spent on Ford.com and eligible Ford Dealership Service purchases (8% cashback value)
• 6 Points per $1 spent on purchases at grocery stores, restaurants, gas and EV charging stations; and on auto insurance, tolls and parking (3% cashback value)
• 2 Points per $1 spent on all other purchases (1% cashback value)

Are you really earning 16 points? No. “Anyone can become a Ford Rewards member and earn 10 Points per $1 spent on eligible Ford purchases,” per the Ford website. You just get another six points per dollar with the card.

How do you use Ford Rewards points? Well, for Ford Service (at your dealer), Ford accessories, Ford parts, or Ford subscriptions (like the fee they charge you for hands-free driving). In other words, not many practical places. (Unless you anticipate that your Ford will need a lot of service. Good ol’ FixOrRepairDaily.)

Hard pass.

Soccer's Card Problem: The Messy/Messi History of MLS and NWSL Financial Partnerships

Those of you who know me know I love soccer. I played as a kid. I referee as an adult. I watch a lot of it on TV. As the 2026-2027 soccer season is getting underway (we’re a few weeks into MLS and just wrapped the first matches in NWSL), I thought it would be fitting to dig into the cobrand card story of soccer.

Between the two biggest domestic leagues (Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League), there's been a revolving door of financial partners, a notable absence of any real cobranded credit card success, and a handful of local credit union deals quietly doing the work that league-level programs couldn't.

Here's the full rundown.

MLS: A League-Level Credit Card Story That Fizzled Out Twice

BMO and the Canadian Clubs (2012–Present)

The first real co-branded card story in North American professional soccer is actually a Canadian one. In May 2012, BMO Bank of Montreal launched an MLS Mastercard program for the three Canadian clubs: Toronto FC, CF Montréal (then Montreal Impact), and Vancouver Whitecaps. The cards were affinity products: branded with team logos, offering standard rewards, and bundled with fan perks such as priority entry and stadium activations.

BMO's position here wasn't just a card play. It was already the jersey sponsor for all three Canadian clubs and had positioned itself as "the Bank of Soccer in Canada." The card was an extension of a much deeper relationship. Those cards remain available in Canada today, making them by far the longest-running soccer cobrands in North America.

Avant and the MLS Forward Card (2022–2025)

South of the (northern) border, MLS made its first real push for a league-wide U.S. credit card in August 2022 when it announced a multi-year partnership with Avant, a Chicago-based near-prime fintech. The deal made Avant the official credit card partner of MLS, the All-Star Game, MLS Cup, and eMLS.

Whose soccer? Our soccer.

The product itself, the MLS Forward Credit Card powered by Avant, issued by WebBank, didn't actually launch until October 2023, a full 14 months after the partnership was announced. When it did arrive, the card carried no annual fee and offered a reward structure built around MLS spending: 5x on MLSstore.com, 3x on gas, 2x on dining and grocery, and 1x everywhere else. Redemption options included cash back, MLS match tickets, and Fanatics gift cards. Cardholders could choose from 23 different designs tied to U.S. clubs.

The catch was that rewards earning was capped at 6,000 bonus points per year across all categories, roughly $60 in value, and the APR sat at 29.99%. That's the part that mattered most: Avant's core business is lending to near-prime consumers. The card was deliberately designed for fans who don't have easy access to mainstream rewards cards. That's a real market, but it also meant the product wasn't going to compete on points with a Capital One Savor or a Chase Freedom.

The partnership has run its course by early 2026, coinciding with MLS signing a new deal with Chime.

Chime Arrives (February 2026)

In February 2026, MLS announced Chime as its new official retail banking, credit card, and debit card partner in the United States. This multi-year deal also includes presenting sponsorship of the MLS All-Star Game.

Here's the thing: Chime doesn't issue a cobranded credit card in the way Avant did. Chime's flagship product is the Chime Card, a secured Visa credit card that functions like a debit card: cardholders load funds into a secured deposit account, which becomes their spending limit. There's no revolving credit, no APR in the traditional sense, and no MLS-branded version announced as of this writing.

What MLS actually has with Chime is a sponsorship arrangement: logo placements, in-stadium activations, social content. The "official credit card partner" designation is doing a lot of marketing work that the product itself isn't delivering on. Chime is using MLS the same way it used the Portland Fire WNBA deal announced in January 2026: as a cultural marketing vehicle targeting millennial and Gen Z fans who already skew toward app-first banking.

So, as of March 2026, MLS technically has a fintech banking partner with "credit card" in its title, but there is no actual MLS cobranded credit card available to U.S. fans.

Team-Level Deals: Where the Real Card Products Live

While the league has cycled through fintech partnerships, individual MLS clubs have quietly built more durable banking relationships with local institutions, and in several cases, those relationships have actually produced card products.

Philadelphia Union + WSFS Bank

Doop

One of the cleaner examples is in Philadelphia. WSFS Bank, the oldest and largest locally headquartered bank in the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware region, partnered with the Union starting in 2022. In May 2023, they launched a cobranded debit card. Unlike the league-level credit products, this one was straightforward: a team-branded debit card tied to a WSFS checking account, positioned around fan identity and community engagement. WSFS is also on-site at select home games at Subaru Park and broke ground in 2023 on the WSFS Bank Sportsplex in Chester.

BMO is South of the Border, Too

NWSL's ACFC and MLS's LAFC play at BMO Stadium

I am a supporter of the Los Angeles Football Club. BMO, the Canadian bank, acquired Bank of the West in 2023 and now offers a BMO LAFC Debit Card. As a local fan, I see many BMO LAFC Card ads. I am also an Angel City FC fan (more on NWSL below), and there is also a BMO Angel City debit card. These cards offer cardholders a 10% discount on LAFC and ACFC merchandise and on special events throughout the year.

St. Louis CITY SC + Together Credit Union

Teeny-tiny EMV chip

When St. Louis CITY SC was still in pre-launch mode, they named Together Credit Union (formerly Anheuser-Busch Employees' Credit Union) as a founding partner and official banking partner in July 2021. By the time the club debuted in 2023, Together had launched an STL CITY-branded debit card with matchday perks: 10% off food and beverage, 10% off retail items at the Team Pavilion, and express entry to home games. Together operates 14 local branches and had 138,000 members at launch. It's a very local, community-oriented deal, exactly the kind of credit union financial partnership that makes sense for a franchise trying to embed itself in a city.

The Broader Credit Union Pattern

The CU Today trade publication noted in late 2023 that "numerous credit unions have entered into partnerships with their local MLS teams," a soft acknowledgment that team-level financial partnerships have proliferated below the league radar. This is consistent with what you'd expect: credit unions have strong community-banking narratives, MLS clubs need local credibility and corporate revenue, and a cobranded debit card is a relatively low-complexity product to launch. Most of these deals don't generate national press.

NWSL: Better Sponsors, No Cobrand

The NWSL's financial partnership story is more notable than MLS's, but it has almost nothing to do with payment cards.

Ally Financial: The Defining Relationship

Ally became the NWSL's first official banking partner in March 2021, and it was a genuinely significant deal. Ally's logo appeared on the sleeve of every NWSL team jersey that season, a league-wide activation that gave Ally a scale most sponsors don't get. In February 2022, Ally also extended the relationship by becoming the first official partner of the NWSLPA (Players Association).

Alex Morgan in 2024, prominently showing off that "Ally" logo

The Ally-NWSL relationship deepened over the following years. In October 2022, Ally signed a five-year extension. The NWSLPA partnership was extended through 2027 in April 2024. By that point, Ally had also become the official banking partner of the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces and the Unrivaled women's basketball league, and eventually the WNBA itself.

Ally's investment in the NWSL was part of a public 50/50 pledge the company made in May 2022 to reach equal advertising spending across men's and women's sports by 2027 — a move driven largely by CMO Andrea Brimmer, who played on Michigan State's first varsity women's soccer team. Ally's leadership described the strategy as finding a louder voice at a smaller overall spend.

What Ally does not do is issue a cobranded NWSL credit card. Ally is a deposit and auto-lending institution. Its product is a high-yield savings account and online checking, not a rewards credit card. The sponsorship has been about brand alignment and media equity, not card acquisition.

Mastercard: A Network, Not an Issuer

Mastercard signed a multi-year partnership with the NWSL in May 2021, making it an official league sponsor and integrating NWSL-specific fan experiences into the Priceless.com platform. USWNT and Portland Thorns defender Crystal Dunn joined Mastercard's global ambassador roster as part of the deal.

This, again, is a network-level sponsorship. Mastercard is not an issuer. The deal gave cardholders (of any Mastercard-issued card) access to NWSL VIP experiences. There's no NWSL Mastercard you can apply for.

Team-Level NWSL Deals

The NWSL has seen some team-level banking partnerships, though the public record is thinner than on the MLS side. The league's rapid expansion from 10 to 14 teams between 2021 and 2024 has created new clubs still working through foundational sponsorship deals. Bay FC, Portland Thorns, Kansas City Current, and others have local banking or credit union relationships. Still, a dedicated cobranded payment card product specifically for NWSL clubs has not seen significant adoption at the team level as of early 2026.

What Does This All Add Up To?

A few themes emerge when you lay this out:

League-level card products are hard. The Avant deal is the only time MLS actually produced a functioning cobranded U.S. credit card at the league level, and the product's economics (near-prime APR, capped rewards) limited its appeal to a specific slice of the fan base. Chime's partnership has the word "credit card" in it, but no card product behind it yet.

Team-level deals are more durable. The credit union and community bank deals at the team level: WSFS with the Union, Together with St. Louis CITY, BMO with the Canadian and LA clubs, are simpler, more locally grounded, and actually result in a physical card that fans can carry. They're not glamorous, but they work.

The NWSL has better sponsors than products. Ally and Mastercard are genuinely high-profile partnerships that have given the NWSL credibility and revenue. Neither produces a card. The league's financial sponsorship history has focused on brand alignment and equity investment, not on card-acquisition economics.

Chime is on a sports marketing run. In the span of a few months in early 2026, Chime signed deals with MLS (February) and the WNBA’s Portland Fire (January), and is reportedly active in other leagues. With its IPO fresh, Chime is spending marketing dollars on cultural relevance with younger audiences. Don't expect an actual cobranded MLS credit card from Chime anytime soon — that's not what they do.

The opportunity is still wide open. No major issuer has cracked a true consumer-facing MLS or NWSL credit card that combined genuine rewards value with real fan appeal. The Avant card was structurally close but served the wrong end of the credit spectrum for the MLS fan demographic, which skews young and educated. 

Sports cobrand cards are a tough sell. They have a mediocre reputation in the issuing world. The perception has long been that fans who want these cards can’t get other products, and that they are inherently positioned for sub- and near-prime. An old joke in the industry is that the only reason there’s an NFL card deal is so bank CEOs can attend the Super Bowl.

Sports are a religion in America these days. There is a strong case to be made for cobranded credit cards, but most programs have missed the mark (with too few benefits) or have been primarily spectator sports. One thing that differentiates soccer fans is that many of them are also involved in the sport: they play as adults, and they coach (and referee) their kids. Compared to the NFL, where few adults are playing tackle football, MLS/NWSL are more participatory. One last reason why 2026 could be a breakout year for soccer and co-brand cards: the World Cup. Visa is a global sponsor and pushing World Cup marketing hard across all channels. All this leads me to ask: Where is the cobrand card that offers 10x points at the stadium shop and 5x points on ALL of your sporting gear? That might be a winner.

CardsFTW

CardsFTW, released weekly on Wednesdays, offers insights and analysis on new credit and debit card industry products for consumers and providers. CardsFTW is authored and published by Matthew Goldman and the team at Totavi, a boutique consulting firm specializing in fintech product management & marketing. We bring real operational experience that varies from the earliest days of a startup to high-growth phases and public company leadership. Visit www.totavi.com to learn more.

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