British bank Abbey National today sold its credit card business to the European arm of US card giant MBNA for £289 million sterling (euro 417 million) under a revenue sharing partnership.
Managing director of Abbey's retail bank Mr Andrew Pople said from July onwards Abbey would start earning commissions from the sale of new cards that would be significantly more than it earned now from this business.
Britain's big four banks - Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland - dominate the British credit card market. Barclaycard is the current market leader.
Abbey hopes to take a bigger market share via the agreement with MBNA which has been operating in Britain since 1993.
Mr Pople said Abbey National had 15 million customers but only about one in 25 of its active customers had an Abbey credit card.
MBNA is the largest independent credit card lender in the world and also provides retail deposit, consumer loan and insurance products.