Sears’ New Credit Card Unveiled in San Diego

Vowing to “change the way people think about plastic,” Sears, Roebuck & Co. on Monday began a marketing and advertising campaign in San Diego to tout its Discover card, a credit card that will also unlock the door to Sears’ financial-services network.

However, the card, which was unveiled in Atlanta earlier this year, won’t be offered elsewhere in California and the rest of the country until next spring, according to Raymond A. Kennedy, president of Discover Card Services Inc.

The Discover card will offer standard credit and debit-card features and already has been accepted by more than 50,000 retail locations across the country. Kennedy, who also is executive vice president of Dean Witter, Sears’ financial-services subsidiary, said it will “obviously take a while” before the Discover card gets on equal footing with credit card giants such as Visa and MasterCard, which in more than 20 years’ use have each built up customer lists estimated at more than 2 million retailers.

The Discover card will offer a revolving line of credit, a tiered savings plan and access to the Sears Financial Network, which includes California-based Sears Savings Bank, Coldwell Banker, Allstate Insurance and Dean Witter Financial Services.

Kennedy said San Diego was selected for the Discover card introduction because of the county’s size and because it has been one of the nation’s best markets for both Sears and Dean Witter. He added that Sears used San Diego to introduce previous new products and services that later appeared nationwide.

Beginning next month, Discover card holders in San Diego will be able to use their cards at more than 400 automated teller machines, including two statewide networks: Sears Savings Bank’s 122 SearsNet ATMs and the more than 200 “ALLCARD” ATMs used in Safeway and 7-Eleven stores. Discover also can be used in the San Diego area at San Diego Trust & Savings Bank’s 73 “7/24” ATMs. More ATM systems will be added before the card is introduced throughout the rest of California and elsewhere in the country, he said.

Kennedy said that Sears was committed to expanding the card nationwide and that Discover’s introductions in Atlanta and San Diego were more to test the workings of the system than the card’s reception among consumers. It is “a systems test, not a market test,” he said. Although he acknowledged that Sears is invading a “mature and intensely competitive” credit card market, he said Discover is the only card to “incorporate spending, savings and investment. . . . We think signing up card members will be relatively easy.”