CITICORP <CCI> RULES OUT CREDIT CARD PRICE WAR American Express Co's <AXP> recent launch of a new "OPTIMA" credit card, with relatively low interest rates and fees, will increase competition with bank credit-card issuers but will not lead to a pricing war, a senior Citicorp offical said. "Over the next two to three years, a very interesting marketing battle will be fought ... competition will not be on price but on product features," Pei-yuan Chia, head of the U.S. card products group, told a banking analysts meeting. Citicorp is the leading U.S. bank credit-card issuer, with some 10 mln accounts and an 11 pct market share. Chia said that Citicorp would focus its credit card marketing efforts on acceptance, noting that Visa and Mastercard currently enjoy a two-to-one advantage over American Express in terms of worldwide acceptance. He also doubted the popularity of American Express' plan to link interest charges on the new OPTIMA card to the bank prime lending rate. "The consumer likes to have a fixed rate instrument," he said. Richard Braddock, head of the whole individual banking division, added that when there is increased competition, "it is not the big people who get crunched but the small ones."