Bank of America Followup

EDITOR’S NOTE: Since around Autumn 2024, sometimes applying for more than three cards leads to approvals that are subsequently converted into duplicate apps. The haphazard nature of recent data-points suggests that it’s probably only happening when an underwriting rep manually reviews something, so some luck is involved if you’re applying for a bunch of the same type of card.

On Thursday I posted about a Bank of America trick or two. The post generated more questions than I thought, so let’s talk about how Bank of America credit card applications work (maybe not officially, but this is how it works in practice):

• Bank of America will only make one hard credit pull a day regardless of the number of applications made
• Personal cards will show up on your credit report once opened, business cards will not
• You can be approved for multiple versions of the same Business card on the same day, just use multiple businesses with multiple EINs
• Some business cards have a Visa and a Mastercard variant, and each is a separate product
• Having $5,000+ in a personal Bank of America checking account will help make business applications sail through the automated approval system
• As long as the credit line on a newly approved business card is greater than $5,000, you’ll likely be approved for another business card so just keep going
• Existing business credit cards don’t affect your ability to earn bonuses or to be approved for a new application with the same card

Last week’s post also laid out a quick plan for maximizing BoA credit card applications and I followed it over the weekend. Here’s what I applied for

• A personal Alaska Visa (67,000 points offer)
• A Business Cash Rewards Mastercard for business A ($750 offer)
• A Business Cash Rewards Mastercard for business B ($750 offer)
• A business Alaska Visa (60,000 points offer)

Spoiler alert, I was approved for every one of them.

Despite playing the game for over 10 years, I’ve somehow never had a personal Alaska Visa. If I had, I’d make sure it’d been a few years since I applied or perhaps picked a different personal card. At the time of applying, I had one Business Cash Mastercard and one business Alaska Visa open, and I had closed a second business Alaska Visa the day before to up my chances for the shenani-go-round. (Why yes, I did just make that word up, why do you ask?)

What’s the takeaway? Go big with Bank of America credit card applications.