By Justin McHenry

GE Money today launched a credit card with a unique reward—the ability to offset your greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming. The GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard acts like a normal cash back credit card, giving one percent of your credit card spending back. However, instead of that one percent going to you, it pays for carbon offsets. In short, that means the money goes toward projects meant to reduce greenhouse gases, which cause global warming. (The card also offers the option for you to take a half percent in cash back and a half percent in offsets, versus the full one percent going toward offsets.)

Carbon offsets are used to fund projects such as tree planting, subsidizing of alternative energy projects like wind farms, capturing and burning methane from landfills, and other activities generally thought to reduce, or offset, humans’ creation of greenhouse gas.

The Earth Rewards credit card will save up cardholders’ refunds throughout the year and pay them out for the greenhouse emissions offsets each year on Earth Day, which is April 22.

In keeping with the environmental theme of the Earth Rewards MasterCard, there will be no paper applications for the credit card; only applications made by phone or via the Internet will be allowed. Interested cardholders can apply online at myearthrewards.com.

The GE Money Earth Rewards MasterCard has no annual fee and currently offers interest rates of either 12.99%, 15.99% or 18.99%, depending on your credit history.

By Seth Harbison

No need to worry about cash on many Alaska Airlines flights, as the airline has begun accepting credit cards and debit cards for in-flight purchases.

Point-of-sale devices, which allow flight attendants to process card payments for food and onboard entertainment such as movies, are now in place on 22 daily transcontinental Alaska Airlines flights. Alaska Airlines plans to expand the service further this fall and eventually accept cards on all flights.

By Justin McHenry

Smith Barney, the wealth management arm of banking giant Citi, announced last week that it is now offering Citi’s ThankYou reward points to customers that use certain products and services from the company. This is the second announcement from Citi of ThankYou points being awarded for services beyond credit cards. Previously Citi had announced a partnership with travel site Expedia.com that allows Expedia customers to earn ThankYou reward points.

Smith Barney will initially offer ThankYou points to its Financial Management Account clients. Clients will receive one ThankYou point per dollar spent on purchases made with an FMA Card linked to their FMA account, with no limit on the points clients can earn and no expiration date.

Citi appears to be trying to up the ante on loyalty rewards by spreading the ThankYou program across more financial and shopping opportunities. By doing so, Citi may be able to differentiate itself in the credit card rewards game, where credit customers have come to expect something back, thus making the basic reward programs of old less interesting to them. If Citi can prove to potential customers that cardholders can earn ThankYou reward points (or bonus reward points) at more locations than any other card, they will have a leg up on their competitors.

Citi’s ThankYou reward program offers points toward merchandise, gift cards, travel rewards and more.

By Justin McHenry

Gap Inc. will soon roll out a new Visa card that offers reward points redeemable for merchandise from Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores. While each of the Gap Inc. chains previously offered private label credit cards good for in-store purchases only, the new card will be a full-fledged Visa that allows for purchases anywhere Visa is accepted. Like most Visa reward cards, it will offer points for every dollar in purchases, regardless of whether the purchases are at Gap Inc. stores or at other merchants.

The move is part of a trend in which consumers are shying away from credit cards that can only be used at a single retail chain and instead prefer cards that can be used wherever they shop.  Many private label store cards are applied for simply to get an initial store discount; the cards are then often put away for good.

GE Money will be the issuer of the new Gap Visa.  GE Money is already the issuer of the private label cards, all of which will continue to be offered.

By Seth Harbison

Discover Financial Services today debuted on the New York Stock Exchange after its spinoff from Morgan Stanley. Trading under the ticker symbol DFS, Discover’s share price declined a dollar to $27.50 in its first full day of open trading. The broader markets were all up significantly today, increasing by about one percent on the day.

Discover is the latest “pure play” card company to go public, trailing the very successful IPO of MasterCard last year, and debuting before the much-anticipated Visa IPO later this year.

Whether Discover can mimic MasterCard’s success remains to be seen, but as a much smaller player its prospects don’t seem quite as bright. And with Visa set to hit the markets, the enthusiasm for Discover seems to so far be tepid. But despite its small market share (estimated at less than 5% of total cards issued), Discover is also known to generate large amounts of cash, making it potentially attractive to either investors or a buyout group in the future.