Warehouse club retailer Costco Wholesale Corp will stop accepting American Express Co's credit cards at U.S. stores from next year, threatening nearly 8 percent of the worldwide annual spending on its cards.
AmEx said on Thursday the loss of the contract would hurt earnings for the next two years, sending its shares down as much as 7 percent and wiping out about $6 billion of market value.
JPMorgan Securities analyst Tien-tsin Huang said the loss of Costco would reduce spending on AmEx cards by about $80 billion a year, including their use at businesses other than Costco's 468 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico.
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