Credit card rewards programs are one of the greatest reasons to use credit cards. Indeed, more than a few believe that rewards programs will be key to making mobile payments all that it can be. Yet it’s possible to take rewards programs too far, to the point where more is being given away than is being brought in.

A development that dates back to the 2008 financial disaster—a JibJab video described it as a time in which “…we spent the kitchen sink to pull back from the brink”—companies offered big rewards to get credit card holders in the door in a time in which going into debt was viewed with the same horrified scorn as eating bread during the height of Atkins.

The combined force of Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, based on reports from Bloomberg, have seen a loss of combined card operations income of around 15 percent as compared to the third quarter of last year. While combined quarterly income is still $3.1 billion, a drop like that is tough to live down. What’s more, expenses for the consumer bank units have increased a full percent, and are now at $15.3 billion.

About the only saving grace of all this is that, right now, volumes are on the rise. More people are coming in, and that means a lot of payments to process. Yet even this good news comes with trouble, as the costs associated with this volume is also on the rise. The gains that would be realized, therefore, are losing ground.

With so many firms offering rewards programs, the rewards have to be sufficiently noteworthy to keep people’s attention. If everyone’s offering a fat stack of rewards, though, fat stacks become table stakes, and table stakes don’t get anyone’s attention. Thus, to get attention, card issuers have to ramp up the rewards, and that leads to the conditions we’ve seen.

Banks need to get more creative about the rewards programs. Instead of just cash back or points, look instead at exclusivity. It’s one thing to offer a big pile of loot, it’s another thing entirely to be the only one offering rewards at certain places. It should help in the long run, because rewards packages focused solely on size aren’t sustainable.