MBNA Buys Credit Union's Portfolio

MBNA has purchased the $19 million Visa credit card portfolio of the Xerox Federal Credit Union. Bill Cheney, president of Xerox FCU explained the motive for the sale by pointing out that there were only 16,000 cardholders among the 75,000 members. Hence, they needed a partner to boost their market penetration. The credit union received five offers for its portfolio. Since Xerox is a sponsor of the Winter Olympic games in 2002, MBNA will be issuing a Xerox FCU/2000 Winter Olympic Games Visa affinity card. According to Cardline, MBNA has acquired other credit union card portfolios, most recently the $35 million Visa portfolio of the Ent Federal Credit Union. Based in Colorado Springs, Ent Federal Credit Union has $1.2 billion in assets, 130,000 members and is the largest credit union in Colorado.