Category: Credit Cards

  1. The American Express Hilton cards have increased offers, all of which have six months to hit minimum spend:

    Honors: 100,00 points + $100 statement credit after $2,000 spend (no annual fee)
    Surpass: 130,000 points after $3,000 spend and waived first year annual fee
    Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend
    Business: 150,000 + 25,000 points after $8000 in spend and $2,000 spend respectively

    These are available via referral, so use P2’s referral or a friend’s referral and make their day. The Surpass in particular is extra juicy when you play upgrade games after a year and you’ve got good spend.
  2. Cardless will be releasing a Coinbase American Express card with tiered rewards up to 4% cash back on all spend. You can join the waitlist for “early access” too. (Thanks to David and pluckyhere)
  3. Chase has newly targeted, heightened redemptions Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cardholders. Increased redemptions only work for some hotels and for some premium cabin travel in the Ultimate Rewards portal, and redemption values are as high as 2.25 cents per point.
  4. The Wells Fargo Expedia OneKey Mastercards have heightened sign-up bonuses through August 5, matching their launch all-time high offers:

    – OneKey: $400 in OneKeyCash with $1,000 spend in three months, no annual fee
    – OneKey+: $600 in OneKeyCash with $3,000 spend in three months, $99 annual fee

    Both earn 3x at gas, grocery, and resturants restaurants.
  5. Monday is your last day to make Q2 estimated tax payments, ideally with a credit card via Pay 1040 at 1.75% or ACI Payments at 1.85%. There are other ways to get credit card payments there but probably not in a way that meets the Q2 deadline.

    If you see higher fees on business cards, wrap them in PayPal. If you get an AmEx Hilton card from item (1), you can probably get an instant number and knock out the sign-up bonus right away too.

Have a nice weekend friends!

If you don’t get an instant card number, at least you can buy this deal?
(Thanks to John K)

  1. Do this now: Register for bonus points at Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, and Hyatt Studios through September 7. Bonus tiers are at three, five, and eight nights.
  2. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s promotion for stays through August 30. You’ll earn 7,500 bonus nights for two night stays, 12,500 bonus points for three night stays, and 15,000 points for longer stays. The promotion is capped at 15,000 points.
  3. US Bank has “Double Bonus Days” running today through Friday. During this promotion, all portal purchases and all card linked purchases from the US Bank site will have doubled rewards.

    For more on the mostly unknown US Bank shopping portal and card-linked program, see last year’s postards. There’s a browser extension available too which is often easier than trying to hunt for the portal.
  4. JetBlue has a special status match to Mosaic for AA and Delta elites running through June 30 which gives Platinum Pro or higher on AA and Platinum or higher on Delta immediate access to Mosaic 2 status and a fast track to top-tier Mosaic 4 status with 50 tiles required to maintain until 2027.

    With the Barclays JetBlue card, $50,000 spend will earn those 50 tiles which makes this deal potentially great. (Thanks to Tom R)
  5. A trustworthy anonymous source corrected me yesterday regarding Sapphire Reserve changes: The changes will be officially announced with details on June 17, and the program will switch on June 21 which gives you a few days to decide whether to exist under the old or the new program. Apparently significant parts the old program will be grandfathered for a significant amount of time for existing card holders.
  6. The United Mileage Plus Shopping portal has a promotion for 1,000 bonus miles with $400 spend through June 15.

MEAB status check.

  1. The Chase Sapphire Reserve card has rumored upcoming changes for months, and now it’ confirmed that they’re happening on July 20 June 21. What we know:

    – You’ve got until July 19 June 20 to get in under the old structure
    – Annual fees will increase
    – Monthly and annual credits will change
    – There will be a business version of the card

    Hopefully you’ve already got a Sapphire Reserve or you’ll be under 5/24 by July 19 to apply under the older, almost certainly better terms. If you’re a “let’s ride the vibes” kind of person, you can read the rumors here.
  2. American Express offers has new travel related offers:

    – $75 off of $300 at Avis through September 7
    – $100 off of $500 at some Hyatts through September 15
    – $50-$80 off of $250 at Hilton through December 9

    Yes, gamers gonna game, but also Apire resort credit stack, amirite?
  3. You can move credit lines between Chase cards when eligible using both the app and the Chase website. In honor of the recent trend for major blogs to make videos about “how to click around to do something mundane and intuitive in an app (video)”, you can see how at at SideShowBob233.com (video).
  4. The American Express personal Delta Gold card has a new sign-up bonus for 50,000 SkyMiles and a $500 statement credit after spending $3,000 and making a purchase with Delta in six months. The annual fee is waived the first year, and this one is available when making a flight booking at delta.com on the checkout page (you don’t actually need to purchase the flight).

    In general this is a better offer than the public 80,000 offer, unless you’re getting outsized value for SkyMiles which is technically still possible, the same way that it’s technically possible for a Razor scooter to out-pace a Volkswagen Beetle.
  5. Rakuten In-Store has 1% or 1x Membership Rewards on its card linked site for purchases at Giant stores (not to be confused with Giant Foods, owned by the same people) on purchases of up to $1,000 per transaction.

    You’ve got 75 days after adding the offer to use it, and once you use it the offer remains valid for another hour. After that hour, you can add it again and start over. If this seems like deja-vu, that’s because we had the same discussion yesterday about Food Lion.
  6. Unsolicited advice: When you’re part of a private group that helps you spend on cards in special ways, consider making sure you understand how the group owners make money or fund the operation. If you can’t answer how, maybe consider your position and exposure.

Happy Tuesday!

The churning blogosphere’s new official uniform.

  1. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to AirCanada Aeroplan through July 17.
  2. The American Express Delta cards have increased offers:

    Personal cards:
    – Personal Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Personal Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months

    Business cards:
    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months

    Cobrand cards like this remain easier to play popup games than non-cobrand cards.
  3. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy cards have new sign-up bonuses, also available via referrals so use those instead:

    – Bonvoy Boundless: Five free night certificates, 50,000 points each after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Bonvoy Bold: 60,000 points and one free night certificate worth up to 50,000 points after $2,000 spend in three months

    The Bonvoy Bountiful card, one of the three most ridiculously named Chase Bonvoy cards, has no increased bonus.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The head of Chase’s Bonvoy credit card naming team.

  1. Do this now (if you hold a Chase Southwest card): Register for Southwest’s promotion for 10x points on up to $500 spend at Southwest through Sunday.

    In the post-Elliot Southwest universe, award ticket fees are your best gamer bet. (Thanks to Dave)
  2. Bank of America’s Spirit card has an increased sign-up bonus of 65,000 points and a $100 companion flight voucher after $1,000 spend in 90 days, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Redemptions on Spirit are often in the 2,500 – 7,500 point range.

    Note that you’ll need a promo code, and reportedly 110662 works, though generally with these any six digit number starting with a ‘1’ also works. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running through Tuesday, June 17. Amazon gift cards continue to be excluded.
  4. The Incomm sites are playing their Incomm tricks:

    – MasterCardGiftCard: Fee-free cards with promo DAD2025
    – VanillaGift: Fee-free cards with promo VGDAD25
    – TheGiftCardShop: *crickets*

    Science is still trying to determine what the reason for this promotion is. We may never know. We do however know that these cards work better than others for certain big box retailers, in certain circumstances with certain velocity limits.
  5. Citi ThankYou has Apple gift card redemptions at 10% off, and with $100 Apple gift cards reselling at 90%+ you’ve got a slight edge over a one cent per point cash-out.
  6. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on $250+ at Southwest up to $400 through July 2. Obviously this pairs nicely with today’s lead.

Have a nice Thursday!

If gaming Southwest was a fridge, it’d be like a bachelor fridge.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton for Business’s offer for 5,000 bonus points after each stay, limit: a whopping three times.

    In case you’re bored and want to earn ~$50 worth of classic Hilton points, you can add five employees, or I guess five “employees”, to your Hilton for Business account for 10,000 bonus points.
  2. American Express Membership Rewards has a transfer bonus to British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus through July 15. With Avios.com transfers, you can move these to FinnAir, Qatar, or Vueling.
  3. Several airline portals have a first half of June promotion for spend:

    – Southwest: 2,000 Rapid Rewards after $300 spend
    – AA: 500 bonus miles after $200 spend
    – Delta: 500 bonus miles after $100 spend

    Of course use portal classics like giftcards.com to manufacture the bonus, and also awe at a first in the modern era: Delta’s SkyMiles offers a better deal than AAdvantage miles at least until you consider the relative value of each mile.
  4. Meijer stores have 50,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $500 in third party gift cards including bulk resale classics like BestBuy and Target, but you’ll need multiple accounts to scale.
  5. Target has a $10 Target gift card free with a $100 One4All gift card through Saturday, and including the varieties that convert to bulk resale classics like Lowes and Home Depot.
  6. Chime has a $460 bonus through InboxDollars for creating a new Chime account and receiving two direct deposits of $201+ each with the first deposit in 30 days.

    Historically Chime has been surprisingly easy to churn, just don’t make their job dead simple, which is a classic mistake.
  7. The Barclays Hawaiian card, a cult classic when paired with the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Mastercard underwritten by Barclays but still separate, has a 70,000 mile sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in 90 days.
  8. PayPal Bill Pay billers (a cryptic MEAB classic): 🪓🪦😭

Happy Tuesday!

Pictured: Repurposed classic MEAB image.

  1. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Meijer stores have a promotion for 10,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $100+ in Choice or One4All gift cards. Both of these have variants that convert to Home Depot and post-Pepper rates for Home Depot are currently north of 90%.

    This one is limited to one per MPerks account, but, uhhh, you know.
  3. Blit Rewards will have a tiered transfer bonus of between 50% and 200% to Accor ALL on Sunday June 1, which brings the effective value per Blit point above 4.5 cents for top tier members with the boosted 1:2 ratio and combined with the current value of the dollar which is trash compared to the euro. You’ve got the week to earn points to prepare. For a refresher on Accor’s reward program, check the mini-guide here.

    I’m 100.000001% sure (aka fluz sure) that my travel patterns are different than yours, but I love the Accor program for Europe and I’ll be transferring in quite a lot as part of this promotion. (Thanks to VFTW)
  4. The no-annual fee Mesa Visa home owners credit card has a sign-up bonus of 50,000 points after $5,000 spend in 90 days with promo code BONUS50. The new iteration of the card pays rewards on a mortgage of up to $100,000 per year whether or not you finance through Mesa’s lenders, unlike their prior version of the card. To be eligible for mortgage point earning though, you have to spend a sum of $1,000+ monthly on the card.

    Word on the street is that mortgage validation is an incomplete process, and so is reporting to credit agencies. I expect both of those things to tighten up in the future. They’ve added transfer partners for points earning too, with Finnair and Accor ALL being the most interesting.

Have a nice Monday friends!

View of the Mesa mortgage validation team’s workbench.

  1. Bank of America’s increased bonuses for the Customized Cash Rewards and Unlimited Cash Rewards cards is scheduled to start on June 1, but applications are occasionally already showing the enhanced bonus because BofA’s IT department has yet to discover a futuristic technology called “the calendar”. Anyhoodles, we’ve now seen what bonus cash-back will look like with Platinum Honors uplift with these offers:

    – Unlimited Cash gets an extra 0.5% cash back in the first year regardless of status
    – Customized Cash’s rewards are boosted based on status

    You know what they say though: IT that hasn’t mastered calendars probably hasn’t mastered boosted rewards either.
  2. The Citi AA Executive card has an increased offer of 100,000 miles after $10,000 spend in three months.

    When this card was introduced, you could open eight of them at the same time, hit the minimum spend, and cancel all before the annual fees hit. Those days are long gone from Citi, but not every bank is Citi.
  3. The Citi Rewards+ card, notable for its 10% rebate on redeemed ThankYou Points, will be converted to the no-annual fee Citi Strata card on July 20. The 10% rebate will either go away in July 19, 2025, or July 19, 2026 if you’ve held your card for less than a year so it’s time to redeem while the redeeming is good. The Citi Strata’s interesting bonus categories are:

    – 3x at grocery, transit, gas, and EV charging
    – 3x on a selectable category which is largely lame

    If you want the Strata card, you’ll be able to apply on July 20.
  4. Bank of America’s Alaska card’s bonus often bounces between 60,000 and 70,000 miles, and whenever it bounces there’s discussion. But, alaska75k.com has been around for a long time and continues to work. Can we stop talking about the other ones yet? [end micro rant]
  5. United is removing the Excursionist Perk and elite YBM upgrades from its MileagePlus program on August 21, and removing its upgrade award chart on November 24. But don’t worry, award redemption rates continue to outpace inflation, so #winning?
  6. Kroger has fee-free Visa gift cards online through Tuesday with promo code CLASSOF2025. These will also earn fuel points.
  7. Stop & Shop, Giant Foods, and Martins earn 10x points on Zift Zillions cards through Thursday. Their little step brother Giant earns 4x over the same time. No, Giant Foods and Giant being the same company but different isn’t confusing, why would you think that?
  8. Blit Rewards added Qatar Airways as a transfer partner at a 1:1 ratio (Or according to their poor layout on the “Participating Loyalty Partners” page, it’s actually a -1:1 ratio).

MEAB factoid of the day: The Toyota Blit can transfer you to your Qatar flight, completing the circle of award life.