Last Reviewed: 12/06/2010

The Discover Miles card is the lightweight brethren of the invincible Discover Escape card. As with the Escape card, PlasticIQ classifies the Discover Miles card as a restricted cash-back card, because the miles earned on Discover Miles can be applied against nearly any form of travel (airline, hotel, auto rentals, cruises, travel packages) in the form of a statement credit post-purchase.

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Last Reviewed: 12/04/2010

The Capital One Venture Card is an excellent restricted cashback credit card, currently ranking 2nd in our cashback category and 3rd in our airline category, using the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine with specific spending assumptions. You may be surprised to see the Venture card appearing in the cashback category, given that cardholders earn miles (and not cash back!) with the use of the card.

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Last Reviewed: 10/4/2010

The Fidelity Investment Rewards Amex card is definitely one of the most heavy-hitting cashback cards available, if not the most, but you absolutely need to know how to navigate its rewards structure in order to get the most from this card.

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Last Updated: 6/13/2011

The team at PlasticIQ enjoys reviewing and analyzing cards like the American Express Zync Card. Why? Because Zync (punned off of the 30th element in the periodic table–Zinc) has a complex rewards structure, making it very difficult for the ordinary Joe to sit down with a pencil and paper and figure out exactly what the card would be worth to him or her. Enter the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine. We’ve run several scenarios through the PIQ Ranking Engine, and have arrived at some definitive conclusions about the Amex Zync card.

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Last Revised: 5/20/2011

The Chase Sapphire credit card is a 1% cashback card with a sexy name and a not-so-exciting sign-up bonus, so it’s not getting a great review from us.

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Last Reviewed: 8/27/2010

If you are looking for a Costco credit card, you need look no further. As you may know, Costco only accepts American Express, and the TrueEarnings Card from Costco and American Express is definitely a super-strong cashback card, routinely clocking in amongst the top 5 cash-back credit cards per the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine (rank varies based on your personal spending profile).

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Last Reviewed: 11/15/2011

There are at least several offers available on the web for the Bank of America BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa credit card. We’ve reviewed two of these offers below (and if you come across any others, please let us know and we can add to this post).

One of the offers provides 2% cashback on groceries, and 3% cashback on gas—we refer to this offer as the “standard” offer, as it is easily found right on the Bank of America website. The second offer we refer to as the “5% offer”, since you get 5% cashback on gas, grocery and drugstore purchases (albeit for only 6 months).

The bottom line is that neither of these offers really shine in the scheme of things, though they also aren’t complete dogs. If collecting sign-up bonuses is your game, you can certainly do a lot better than the $50 and $100 bonuses offered here. The 3% cash back on gas on the standard offer is decent, but you can get 5% cashback on gas with the PenFed Visa Platinum Card. The 5% cash back on gas, groceries and drugstore purchases on the alternate offer runs out after only 6 months, sort of like when the Avatar exits the Avatar state (forget the lousy motion picture, I’m talking about the Nickelodeon animated version, which really rocks.)

If for some reason you feel compelled to apply for BofA’s Cash Rewards Visa, then, broadly speaking, you should get the 5% offer if you plan to keep the card only a few years; if you plan to hold Cash Rewards for the long term (say, 5 years or more), then the standard offer will likely be the better choice (but you should verify this yourself using our PIQ Ranking Engine, since each person has a unique spending profile which impacts the rate at which you earn rewards).

Earning Cashback

While both BankAmericard Cash Rewards offers provide 1% cash back on all purchases, the standard offer provides 2% cashback on groceries and 3% cashback on gas. That might seem like a pretty good deal, but there’s a catch: you are limited to $1,500 of spend per quarter (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, etc) in the bonus categories, after which you just earn 1% even on those. So, assuming you could max out the $1,500 of spend in the gas category (where you earn the most bonus points), you’d only earn an additional $30 (2% * 1,500) above and beyond the base 1% cashback. If you split your spend 50-50 between supermarkets and gas stations, you’d only earn an additional $22.50 (1% *$750 + 2%*$750) per quarter. This type of cap can really reduce the performance of the card if you often exceed the $1,500 spend limit.

So, if we turn our attention to the 5% offer, we see that you earn a whopping 5% cashback on gas, grocery and drugstore purchases—but this time the catch is that this bonus comes crashing back to Earth (e.g. 1% cashback) after 6 months.

So Which Offer is Better?

Well, firstly, neither offer gets us excited here at PIQ. But we did run the PIQ ranking engine with the default spend profile. Of course, I’m sure no individual has this exact profile, so please go ahead and use the ranking engine yourself to validate.

As the table below shows, the standard offer lags the 5% offer during years 1-3, but then begins to overtake the 5% offer in years 4 and beyond. This should be expected, since the 5% offer runs out after 6 months and also benefits from a higher initial sign-up bonus ($100 versus $50) which gets washed out over time.

Redeeming BankAmericard Cash Rewards

Both cards can redeem for straight cash back. The interesting twist is that the standard Bank Americard Cash Rewards Visa offer gives you a 10% bump up in the value of your redemptions if you deposit the rewards directly into a BofA checking or savings account (easy enough!).

However, the 5% offer gives you a much more robust 25% redemption bonus if you redeem in chunks of $300 or more (in years 2 and beyond, that translates to spending at least $30K on the card before redeeming—you’ll need to be patient like Buddha).

By the way, the PIQ Ranking engine automatically assumes that for the standard offer you will deposit into a BofA account (thus earning the 10% bonus), and that for the 5% offer you will redeem in chunks of $30K.

PlasticIQ’s Final Analysis of 2 BofA Cash Rewards Visa Offers

Well, as we mentioned up-front, there’s nothing really “wow” about the BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa (either offer). When we ran the PIQ ranking engine just a few minutes ago (using the default spend settings), the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card earned about 70% more rewards—so you may want to check that card out as well.

BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa (“Standard Offer”)	BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa (“5% Offer”)
Apply for the BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa (“Standard Offer”)	Apply for the BankAmericard Cash Rewards Visa (“5% Offer”)

Last Updated: 12/26/2011

The Discover More card is a good example of just how complex humans can make things, and a good example of why the PlasticIQ Ranking Engine can be a valuable decision-assisting tool. To the casual consumer, one that just reads bolded marketing copy and doesn’t examine the fine print, the Discover More card might look like a 5% cashback credit card. But the fact is that Discover More has both spending caps and seasonally rotating categories, along with insanely complex rewards tiering (see below) which limit the value of the 5% cashback feature.

Note: we cover 3 distinct Discover More offers in this review.  One of the offers comes with a nice $150 cash bonus, whereas an otherwise identical offer doesn’t (but this 2nd offer has lower promotional APRs).  We also include a nice 18-month 0% APR balance transfer offer.

Not Into The Seasons?

If rotating seasonal categories aren’t your thing, but you’re otherwise on the hunt for a Discover card, check out the Discover Escape Card, our top-rated cash back card out of all Discover cards.  If you aren’t wedded to Discover, then you may want to have a peek at the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card–it’s a mountain of plastic.

Breaking Down Discover More’s Seasonal 5% Cashback Bonus Categories

The Discover More card pays a total of 5% cash back on certain pre-defined spend categories, which rotate quarterly. Here’s both the 2011 and 2012 categories (we provide the 2011 ones to give you an idea of how the categories might change each year.). As you can see, from 2011 to 2012, Discover has significantly increased the amount of quarterly spend eligible for bonus treatment–an important improvement.

So, if we assume that Q3 and Q4 2012 will also have spend limits of $1,500 (after which you would only earn the standard cashback rate of either 1% or 0.25%), then the maximum you could earn from these bonus categories would be $6,000 of spend per year at a 5% rewards rate, which works out to $300. Not bad, if you can max out those categories each quarter.

A Closer Look at Earning Rewards with the Discover More Card

The Discover More Card, is, without a doubt, the most complex rewards program we have programmed into the PIQ Ranking Engine to date. The combination of rewards based on annual spend, along with certain spend categories (those rotating bad boys!) not counting as part of the annual spend, is a doozie. We’ll break it down here (after I down a martini):

• So on your first $3,000 of spend each year (with the exception of the bonus categories) with the Discover More card, you’ll earn a paltry 0.25% on all purchases. Once you cross the magical $3K spend line, you’ll still only earn a plain-vanilla 1% cash back (a reward level you can get by blindly reaching into a basket full of plastic). What this means is that you should really only use this card to make purchases that qualify for the bonus category treatment of 5% cashback. Period.
• The other factor to note: purchases made within your bonus categories do not count towards the $3K spend target. Since we’re strongly advocating that you only use this card to make bonus category purchases, if you follow our advice you will never hit the $3K spend target. Trust me, it’s for the better.
• Warehouse purchases, like Sam’s Club and CostCo, always earn only 0.25% and never count towards the $3K spend target.

So Which of the 3 Discover More Offers Should I Apply For?

This is fairly straight-forward. If you’re in the market for rewards, and don’t need to execute a balance transfer or obtain a low purchase APR, then the $150 sign-up bonus offer is the clear winner (it even comes with an additional 2% bonus on Amazon purchases, unique among the 3 offers).

If, on the other hand, you need to make a balance transfer, then of course go for the 18-month 0% APR balance transfer offer (but you didn’t need me to explain that, now did ya).

Finally, if you’re in the market for a low purchase APR, then the 15-month 0% promotional purchase APR More card is the one for you.

PlasticIQ’s Takeaway on the Discover More Credit Card

While we don’t yet know the rewards caps for Q3 and Q4 of 2012, if we assume they are the same as Q1 and Q2, you might be able to earn an additional $300 in cash back if you use the card perfectly and max out the rewards categories. Let’s also be clear that you should not be using the Discover More as your primary everyday credit card.

Ultimately, Discover More’s spending caps and overall complexity of the rewards program are its Achilles Heel. You’ll have to decide whether the extra monitoring effort justifies the incremental annual cashback you could earn with it.

Discover More $150 CashBack Offer	Discover More 15-month 0% APR Purchase Offer	Discover More 18-month 0% APR Balance Transfer Offer

Last Reviewed: 8/15/2010

The American Express Blue Sky credit card is another one of those cards masquerading as a travel credit card, yet behaving more like a cash back card with some redemption restrictions. Thus, on PIQ’s Plastic Ranking Engine you will find the AMEX Blue Sky card in both the travel and cash back categories.

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Last Reviewed: 8/13/2010

The Bank of America Accelerated Rewards American Express credit card offers a respectable, but by no means jaw-dropping, 1.25 World Points per dollar spent. Since World Points can be redeemed in the form of cash back at a 1:1 rate (as long as you are careful! read on…), the card operates as the equivalent of a 1.25% cash back card.

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