The UK's Abbey National is to start issuing its own credit cards again after terminating an outsourcing agreement with MBNA.
Abbey sold its credit card business to MBNA in 2001.
The move back into the market follows a review of its operations by new Spanish parent Banco Santander.
Under an agreed transitional arrangement, MBNA will continue to operate and administer all 1.2 million Abbey-branded credit cards, and will retain ownership of those assets.
The new Abbey credit card, expected to launch in March 2007, will be one of the first Abbey products to run on Santander's in-house IT system, Partenon. The UK bank expects to issue about 50,000 cards a quarter.