Capital One: Isn't There More To Life Than Plastic?

Standing in front of more than 200 Wall Street analysts last month, Richard D. Fairbank launches into his sales pitch. Top executives of Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) have already explained how the Falls Church (Va.) issuer of Visa and MasterCards managed to weather the rising interest rates and unprofitable promotions that have waylaid its peers since last summer.

Now, chief executive Fairbank has a much tougher task: Persuading this crowd to stop thinking of Capital One as just a credit-card company. Pacing across a ballroom stage at Washington's Four Seasons Hotel, Fairbank tells the analysts that Capital One has found a perfect new home for the innovative techniques it uses to identify new selling opportunities: the Internet. Linking its terabytes of data on consumers' credit and spending habits with the Net's interactive shopping, Capital One wants to lead a revolution in how loans, insurance, phone service, and a host of other products are sold. "We have a tiger by the tail!" Fairbank declares.