Category: Credit Cards

Let’s start with a few deals:

  1. Brex has a new $500 gift card bonus when signing up for one or both of a new Brex card or Brex business checking account in July. To be eligible, you’ll need to spend either $2,500 on your Brex rewards debit card or deposit $50,000 within the first 30 days. A few notes:

    – Brex doesn’t like sole proprietorships
    – Brex likes tech companies, especially venture funded companies
    – Brex has interesting transfer partners and spend multiples, but transfer ratios aren’t 1:1

    Brex can be down to clown as long as you tend to behave like a regular customer.
  2. The United Airlines shopping portal has promotion for 2,500 bonus miles with $600+ spend through August 9.

    Giftcards.com remains an easy option, and as of this writing it’s 2x-3x on the portal too. (Thanks to SideShowBob233)
  3. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 12x points earning on DoorDash gift cards through Saturday. Annoyingly, the maximum denomination is $200 per gift card.

    There might be a reason that a churning and manufactured spend blog is writing about DoorDash, and it’s not just about lowering the cost of expensive food.
  4. Citi has a targeted offer for $75 off of $400+ when booking hotels through its portal. This offer stacks with annual Citi hotel offers.

And follow with some mildly interesting notes:

  1. Wyndham temporarily increased its transfer limit to Caesars Rewards to 60,000 annually through September 11.
  2. American Express is requiring re-enrollment for Hertz President’s Circle status for many Business Platinum cardholders. You’ve got until the end of 2026, but I’d knock it out right now and forget about it.
  3. The Citi ThankYou Mastercard, formerly the Shop Your Way Rewards card, will no longer have access to transfers to JetBlue on September 20. To make up for it though, expect new targeted spend offers tomorrow.

Happy Tuesday!

At least you earned 12x points for your $65 DoorDash that looks nothing the like AI image, right?

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in integer multiples of $600
    – Look for the lower fee “Everywhere” cards if you can liquidate them

    Remember that zero is an integer too if you’re exhausted by $200s. These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  2. The original American Express Blue Cash, unavailable to new applications since 2018 (!), is being transitioned to a Blue Cash Everyday card on March 4, 2027.

    It’s not too hard to spend $56,500 at grocery stores, gas stations, and drug stores in two months and American Express doesn’t care about cycling for seasoned accounts, so send it.
  3. The Synchrony Plus World Mastercard has a targeted offer for 10% back on spend for 60 days. If you don’t have a mailer, you’ve got a few options:

    – According to the Javascript on the site, a promo code is two letters followed by nine numbers
    – Remember that zero is also a percent and opt for the alternate, zero bonus multiplier
    – Try and browbeat a Synchrony representative into a code

    For no reason at all, here’s a friendly reminder that Synchrony cards shouldn’t be cycled, at all, ever.
  4. A long useful travel hack is about to become less useful, so smoke ’em if you got ’em while you still can. Also, learn from this trick because travel hacking across different loyalty programs, or even different aspects within the same loyalty program, often rhymes.

Happy Monday!

More lessons in rhyming.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Summer promotion for 3,000 bonus points for three night or longer stays at Hyatt Place and Hyatt Select properties through the end of the month, which (probably) stacks with the other Summer promotion for 2,000 bonus points for two night or longer stays after the second stay through September 7.
  2. The Chase Hyatt personal Visa card has a highest ever bonus of:

    – 45,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months
    – +1x points on up to $30,000 spend in six months

    So, $30,000 spend is at least 105,000 total points, also known as enough for 1 ½ nights at Park Hyatt Kyoto or long enough to decompose (30 nights) at the Hyatt Place Lubbock. This will probably be available for referrals on Monday.
  3. There’s reportedly a targeted Capital One Business card referral bonus for 100,000 miles (!) for the referrer and the regular sign-up bonus for the referred. The link is valid for referrals to the Venture X Business and the Cash Plus Business card, and you can check your referral offers here.

    I got a rock, but it was at least a shiny rock this time.
  4. Stop & Shop, Giant Food, and Martins have 10x points on Home Depot and Lululemon gift cards through Thursday. Per-account limits are either $1,500 $2,000.

    It’s been a while, but the corporate overlords are punking the sister brand Giant with only 6x points.

Have a nice weekend, friends!

The green means money, right?

Somehow the company that thought buy.com was too hard to remember, Rakuten, was the biggest mover for the holiday weekend:

  1. The RobinHood Gold Visa card issued by Coastal Community Bank did the most RobinHood thing ever: They added 3% foreign transaction fees without notifying anyone. Nice.
  2. The Rakuten Visa card’s online portal +3x rewards cap increased from $7,000 to $10,000 annually, and reportedly the card added a $100 referral bonus which will probably stack with the 1-2 days per month periodic $200 sign-up bonus.

    This card mixed with a Bilt Palladium is an affiliate-revenue free unlock.
  3. The Rakuten portal has an $200 / 20,000 point bonus for being approved for a new Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards Visa. The card has a $200 sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in 90 days, and currently earns 6% back in the first year in several categories, capped at $2,500 spend per quarter.

    The double-double cash-back on Bank of America cards is sadly gone though. (EDITED: applied for -> being approved for, thanks to Jim)
  4. The Rakuten portal has a $100 / 10,000 point bonus for being approved for a new Citi Strata Premier Mastercard. The card’s own bonus is 60,000 ThankYou points after $4,000 spend in three months.
  5. The Rakuten portal also has a triple cash back promotion through July 5th, and includes a few hobbies favorites like: Chase Freedom Unlimited, IHG, Sam’s Club, StubHub, and Viator.
  6. Alaska Airlines has an economy award sale for travel booked by tomorrow and flown between September 1 and November 15. Notable prices:

    – Hawaii: 11,500 miles
    – Seoul: 20,000 miles
    – Amsterdam: 20,000 miles

    If you can book this on Alaska metal, you may find paid upgrades to business class are rather modestly priced.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Slightly less modestly priced.

  1. PerfectGift.com has a bonus $150 choice gift card when sending a $500 choice gift card to a third party by July 4 using promo code 250SMILES. These can be redeemed for Visa, Home Depot, Target, and other high value gift cards. I hope this gets you more excited than Paze at Wendy’s did, but you’ll need to practice isolation to scale.

    These are Sutton gift cards.
  2. Chase has new co-branded spend offers, check for targeting at chase.com/mybonus. Offers have been seen on at least the Amazon, Aeroplan, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Ritz, and United cards, and include:

    – 10x points on $1,000 at gas, grocery, or restaurants
    – 5x points on $1,000 at gas, grocery, or restaurants
    – 3,000, 4,000, or 6,000 bonus points for between $3,000 and $6,000 spend

    Each of these are valid through September 30.
  3. The Twitter X Money Visa underwritten by CrossRiver bank launched for premium subscribers. The vitals

    – The Visa is a debit card
    – There’s reportedly 3% cash back
    – Savings kept in the account will reportedly earn 6% APR
    – You won’t have a custodial, FDIC insured account

    X premium costs $8 per month, and reportedly receiving a payment from an X user that already has the card makes you eligible for the account whether or not you’re a premium subscriber, so queue the worlds weirdest conga.
  4. Xander wrote in to let me know that American Express Blueprint can now create virtual cards for seemingly all business credit cards, including co-branded cards; so long PayWithExtend, and hello more shenanigans.
  5. The Chase Freedom Unlimited Visa card has a new application bonus via Rakuten of either $50 or $90 (or 5,000 or 9,000 points). The card’s $200 sign-up bonus after $500 spend in three months is also part of the deal.

Happy Wednesday!

A clam demonstrates isolation for PerfectGift.com.

  1. The Delta American Express Business cards have new, targeted online upgrade offers:

    – Delta Business Platinum: 50,000 SkyMiles with $8,000+ in six months
    – Delta Business Reserve: 60,000 SkyMiles with $12,000+ in six months

    If you have a Business Gold and your account is lucky, you can do the Business Platinum upgrade, wait about 31 days, then do the Business Reserve upgrade. If you want to (likely) get shutdown, you could potentially go in the opposite direction.
  2. Staples stores have fee free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  3. Kroger stores have a coupon for a fee-free variable load Visa or Mastercard loaded with at least $150, expiring today.

    Unfortunately these are limited to one per account, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you might have more than one of those. Call me crazy I guess.
  4. I don’t know of a good place for consolidated grocery news for manufactured spenders, so let’s quick-form one today:

    – Safeway’s Just4U program’s $20 and $15 cash-out options are back after a month hiatus
    – Kroger’s shutdown team works regular business hours, more or less
    – New gold Zift cards aren’t earning Just4U points automatically
    – Kroger coupons continue to stack in new and unusual ways

    I’m still workshopping a name for a periodic section like this, and grocery quickies just doesn’t feel like it.

Happy Monday!

MEAB meets the internet.

  1. On July 1, Bilt will have a transfer bonus to Hilton Honors between 75% and 175% based on status, with the bonus on a maximum of 100,000 points. They’ll also have increased gift card redemptions between 25% and 100%, also based on status. Both might sound good on paper, but neither is a great value in practice.

    Side note: When 🙄 won’t do, there’s this.
  2. Coverd is a weird Visa consumer credit card that secured $7.8 million in funds by big names in venture capital. Some details:

    – Earn rate varies hourly (!)
    – There are varying 3-minute (!) “surge windows” for even bigger earning
    – Earn rate depends on transaction size, with 4 bands (!)
    – Boosted earn rates are limited to one transaction, until that category’s rates change (!)
    – Your monthly earn limit is based on last month’s spend
    – You can’t earn more than your points cap, which is variable
    – The value of points isn’t published, but seems to be 0.5 cents per point

    The best part? And I’m not making this up, their press talking points include the sentence: “traditional credit card rewards have become outdated with complicated points systems … Coverd aims to change that with a transparent rewards model“. Nice. (Thanks to David)
  3. Wyndham is devaluing redemptions for new bookings on September 15. Awards will have four price bands: 5,000, 15,000, 30,000, or 45,000 points nightly. RIP Scandinavia I guess, and it’s time to think seriously about whether or not you still want to hold a Wyndham credit card.
  4. The Citi AAdvantage Platinum Mastercard has an 80,000 mile sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in three months, and the $99 annual fee is waived for the first year.

    This offer comes from an in-flight promotion and requires a six digit promo code. A random code like 000000 works (yes, technically 000000 could be a random number).
  5. The Capital One Spark Cash card has an increased sign-up bonus of $1,000 after $10,000 spend in three months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year.

    This “business” card will report to your personal credit report, and miles can transfer from this card to Venture X cards.
  6. Kroger fuel points can now be redeemed for groceries at a flat one cents per point in $10 increments, but only $10 per day so call it a slog at best.

Have a nice weekend, friends!

The Coverd office motto.

  1. Meijer has 10,000 bonus points on $100+ in Mastercard gift cards, limit 10,000 points per account.

    Meijer sells both Pathward / BlackHawk Network and Sunrise gift cards.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon and flexible fuel cards running through July 7. Yes, this is different than the last two-week 4x fuel points promotion that ended the day before this one started.

    The last promotion saw Kroger fighting back against gamers, but gamers just found a variation on the game because good/evil (choose one) always wins, except those times that they lose I guess.
  3. American Express Membership Rewards transfer bonuses to Hilton and Virgin Atlantic ended prematurely. Speculation suggests that they were accidentally released ahead of their intended July 1 date. (Thanks to FM)
  4. Expedia’s OneKey program is devaluing, with earning now based on status tier instead of a fixed 2% cash back on non-flights, no earning on flights, and the removal of its price guarantee.

    The Expedia OneKey credit cards remain an interesting niche play though. If you haven’t heard of this card in a long time, or possibly ever, it’s probably because they don’t pay much in the way of affiliate sales commission; do with that what you will.
  5. Asiana Airlines will complete its acquisition by Korean Air later this year. As of December 17, they’ll no longer honor Star Alliance award bookings, even those already ticketed.

    If you have one of those bookings, I’d start looking (a) at legal recourse, and (b) backup award flights on other carriers.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

The Expedia OneKey cards sit in the corner wondering why no one loves them.