When Barclays entered the U.S. credit card market in 2004, it bet on a partnership model to set itself apart from competitors.

Twenty-two years later, a co-branded card originally started by the bank it acquired – the Frontier Airlines credit card, started by Juniper Bank in 2003 – is going strong. The partnership was extended in June, through 2037.

In July, Barclays launched another co-brand: the Samsung Galaxy Card, which automatically integrates into the Samsung wallet when a customer is approved. (It also has the potential to be its most far-reaching, as according to Samsung, one in seven people worldwide have a Galaxy phone. Some 30% of U.S. smartphone users are Samsung Galaxy customers, according to Counterpoint Research.)

Launching this product was different than Barclays’ other co-brand products, in part because of an added “layer of coordination” between the bank and its partner, said Doug Villone, head of U.S. cards and partnerships at Barclays’ U.S. consumer bank. But the effort is paying off as adoption numbers are promising, according to Villone.

Villone explored this and other topics late last month with Banking Dive at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

BANKING DIVE: You said adoption of the Samsung partnership was ahead of expectations. By what measure, and how far ahead?

DOUG VILLONE: Something you worry about when you launch a new co-brand, especially one with a very strong value proposition within the partner's properties, is that the card ends up being used to buy a phone [in Samsung’s case] but doesn't get used to buy your coffee.

We can’t share specific customer sign-up figures, but adoption has exceeded our internal business-case expectations. More than half of transactions are made through Samsung Pay, and most of those are outside Samsung’s own ecosystem. That suggests customers are using the card for everyday purchases, not just buying Samsung products.

Overall, customer activity, spending and adoption have met or exceeded expectations so far.

Has customer feedback led to changes since launch?

We never viewed this as a “set it and forget it” product. We expect to add features and functionality over time.

Currently, customers can complete about 70% of common servicing tasks in the Samsung Wallet, including making payments, viewing transactions and redeeming rewards. We’re not satisfied with that.

There are still things that you might need to contact Barclays about, and we want to continue to make it so ultimately, you never have to leave the Samsung Wallet ecosystem to do that.

We offer loans and deposits and other things to consumers in our other programs, and I can imagine a world where there would be more things that would be available to [Samsung Galazy card] consumers as well – things like servicing chat, which we think would be a great add-on feature to what's already a very digital experience.

You’ve refreshed and updated the rewards proposition for a number of physical card partnerships this year. Is it harder or easier to update a wallet-based product than a traditional card?

It's different. Samsung owns the experience because it's sitting inside their wallet. There are a lot of capabilities we have for our other clients that we can make available to them, but the key difference is we have to work with Samsung’s development teams to ensure that we're exposing that – they're making sure this fits the Samsung experience that they're trying to create for their consumers. It creates a new layer of coordination.

As their operating system updates, we can bring things to life in a very seamless way to the consumer. So it's almost a surprise when they have new features and functionality. But it does require a new layer of coordination, because it's something we're exposing to their property.

What are the next improvements or milestones you're working toward?

I firmly believe that if you have a product that sits in a wallet on your phone, you would want to be able to do everything you can from that. If you want to interact with us through a chat, you should be able to do most things through a chat. Think of every permutation of servicing over time – we would want to be able to do that.

What we launched was the most important things you could do: redeem rewards, do your transactions, pay your bill, lock your card, activate your card. But it's not exhaustive. There are still things we want to enhance related to the servicing and the usage experience, as well as offering potentially other products in an integrated way. 

Your Frontier partnership isn’t the only long-term one. The co-branded card with Barnes & Noble is about 20 years old, and your partnership with JetBlue is 10. What makes a good refresh of a longstanding partnership?

It used to be that card co-brand card programs might refresh every five or 10 years. What we found is that you need to refresh products more often than that – in many cases, every three or four years.

Sometimes the look and the feel of the product just needs to be modernized, but often it's the value proposition that may need to be refreshed. In some cases, consumers want a different product to meet them where they are.

For example, most co-brand products used to offer 1% to 3% in some kind of rewards currency. But now a lot of programs might offer you status; they might offer you lounge access. The consumer may want streaming credits, or they might want quadruple points at grocery stores. You have to adjust your product to meet what the consumer is looking for today, and that could be different than what they were looking for three or five years ago.