You have to love U.S. Bank’s aggressive play to retain customers in danger of trading their NWA WorldPerks Visa cards for the Delta SkyMiles AMEX. It reminds us that while credit card marketing may be down – it is certainly not out.

U.S. Bank’s “FlexPerks Travel Reward Visa” is one of the clearest indications yet that there are some things card issuers will not sit idly by and let happen, rising charge-offs and unemployment be damned. In this case, U.S. Bank is not ceding free reign to AMEX to cherry pick from what was arguably U.S. Bank’s most prized card portfolio.

With U.S. Bank’s rollout of this product, Delta (with ample help from AMEX we’re certain) has been pushing their own product heavy via email and paid search (when you search “Flexperks”, look what the top two sponsored links are) and amping up their offers a bit. With this battle for customers clearly “on”, Delta and AMEX had better prepare a rich product with a strong acquisition offer to secure the WorldPerks Visa customers they want the most.

The targeting possibilities will be fun to watch play out.
 Will Delta/AMEX cater their offers to the business travelers with Minneapolis, Detroit, and Memphis ties (current NWA hubs)?
 Will U.S. Bank up the ante on the offer since they no longer have the restraints of a single airline relationship on their product?

What about the offers?
 Could the SkyMiles AMEX go annual fee free for longer than a year?
 Will AMEX offer up significant Medallion Qualifying Miles in addition to just pure travel-related miles?
 Can U.S. Bank and Visa afford to give away 25K, 30K, even 50K FlexPerks to motivate the audience?

And, from a purely strategic perspective, the repercussions are equally interesting:
 Will existing WorldPerks Visa cardholders be loyal to their current issuing bank (U.S. Bank) and a new product, or will they stick with the airline loyalty currency but switch to a new card and jump in with AMEX?
 How does U.S. Bank convince their targeted consumers that the value of FlexPerks is equivalent or even higher than SkyMiles?
 Can FlexPerks stand out in a credit card world saturated with similar products (Capital One No Hassle Miles, Miles by Discover, and Citi PremierPass to name a few).

What do you think? Who will come out on top? What does Delta/AMEX need to do to motivate the transition and what does U.S. Bank need to do to stem attrition?