• The Boston Globe, Monday, June 11, 2007 11 AM

Bank of America is launching a credit card today--Accolades American Express--that offers amenities such as winter excursions with an Olympic skier and cooking classes with a master chef to its most affluent clients. You have to be a global wealth client with at least $100,000 in net assets to qualify for the card.

The new card is one of several that banks--which before 2004 were mostly limited to issuing Visa and MasterCard plastic--are creating in the wake of a regulatory decision that ended the card companies' ability to prevent banks from doing business with their competitors.

American Express charges merchants nearly 2.6% in fees for every dollar of transactions, compared with less than 2% on average for Visa and MasterCard. That adds up to extra revenue that American Express uses to fund perks that appeal to its wealthy cardholders, the same approach Bank of America is using with Accolades.

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