This is an interesting topic that not hasn't been discussed before, at least not that I know of. When the economy gets better, I think that Discover is going to be the card that consumers will be using more and become the third card that's accepted by merchants worldwide if they lower their merchant fees.
There's going to be serious competition between AMEX and Discover when it comes to gaining customers. We already know that Discover is a conservative lender and consumers should accept that. We already saw what happened with AMEX due to the ridiculously large credit lines they issued to consumers. Those credit lines greatly exceeded consumers' spending habits and when consumers starting losing their jobs, they utilized 80% of their credit lines and weren't able to make payments, AMEX started reporting huge losses and that's when they starting reducing credit lines and limiting their exposure. This is also led them suspending accounts and requesting tax info.
Personally, I would prefer to have a card from a conservative lender such as Discover knowing that I wouldn't have to deal with any hassles that AMEX put their customers through. In a year or two, AMEX will no longer be known as the prestigous lender that they once were. If AMEX wants to gain the customers they lost, they're going to have to step it up and offer decent statement credits for new accounts.
Honestly, I would never go back to AMEX because you can't intentionally reduce your clientelle and expect them to come back when things start looking up. That's not how you do business and you need to pay the consequences of a business strategy that backfired.
