A couple of years ago I posted a paper on the credit card’s midlife crisis. At the time the problems were that the credit card had become commoditized (the desperate attempts by banks to appear different, shows just how same old all the offers are), the market was close to saturated, and the days of consumers rapidly increasing card borrowing had come to an end. Oh, and by the way, one of the major sources of profits for credit cards—interchange fees—looked like it was in jeopardy.

All of these problems are more acute today and in addition getting consumers to take credit and getting markets to securitize the debt looks increasingly dicey. Banks that have been waiting to rethink their card programs—from loyalty to pricing to product redesign should make a crash effort to save this profit stream.