Wednesday: Rakuten Card, New Merrill Bonus, Delta Card Games, Vanilla Gift Cards, and Rove Change

1. First Electronic Bank’s Bank’s Rakuten American Express card has an increased sign-up bonus of $100, or 10,000 Membership Rewards, after $1,000 spend in 90 days. The card earns:
   
   – Rakuten portal: 4x up to $7,000 spend per year
   – Rakuten restaurants: 5x
   – Groceries and dining: 2x
   – Everywhere else: 1x
   
   The card definitely isn’t an unsung hero, but it is a card that earns unlimited 2x Membership Rewards at grocery without RAT concerns, and possibly soon unlimited 2x Bilt points at grocery too. It’s also a third party AmEx. Finally, it’s time for your annual reminder that Rakuten used to be called buy.com, but that was too hard to say and spell, or something.
   
2. Existing Bank of America Preferred Rewards members have an opportunity for a $1,000 bonus for bringing $250,000+ in retirement or regular brokerage investments into a new Merrill account, even if have an existing Merrill account with promo 1000PR.
   
   You can ACATS transfer existing investments. Investments only have to be with Merrill for 90 days after transfer.
   
3. American Express has newly targeted upgrade offers for:
   
   Delta Gold to Platinum: 30,000 SkyMiles + $250 statement credit with $3,000 spend
   Delta Platinum to Reserve: 35,000 SkyMiles + $300 statement credit with $4,000 spend
   
   Both give you six months to hit the spend.
   
4. American Express’s Delta Personal Gold card also has a heightened $500 statement credit + 50,000 SkyMiles sign-up bonus after $3,300 spend in six months through October 29. The offer is presented while making a (dummy) booking, and the annual fee is waived for the first year too.
   
   This one won’t work with the above targeted upgrade offers in the first year though, thanks to CARD act, also known as the fried twinkee of credit card regulations.
   
5. Vanilla Gift has fee-free Visa gift cards with promo code VISA100. I’d be surprised if other Incomm sites don’t also have promotions running, but they’re not advertising them in the same ways that they normally do so I can’t tell. Purchase limits are $10,000 per rolling 24 hours per account.
   
   These are Vanilla / Incomm gift cards. (Thanks to DoC)
   
6. Rove lets you now earn regular loyalty points and elite night credits on some hotel bookings in addition to miles earned directly with Rove.

Happy Wednesday!

Rakuten’s next rebrand.