Credit Cards With Potentially Confusing Rewards Programs
Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money.
There’s no shortage of rewards credit cards that offer enticing perks worth real money — potentially hundreds of dollars each year.
But if the rewards program is complicated to navigate, it can be tough to get value out of your card. Instead of saving money, you’re left with a pile of points that were hard to earn and even harder to cash in. That’s why the Nerds consider how easy it is to use a rewards program when making our picks for the best credit cards.
There will always be those who relish the challenge of optimizing more complicated cards, especially if it means earning outsize rewards. These cards fit that bill well.
LOOKING FOR SIMPLE CREDIT CARD REWARDS? |
|---|
Cash-back cards
Chase Freedom Flex℠
The Chase Freedom Flex℠ essentially combines two rewards structures into one card. You get tiered rewards that are fixed, on top of 5% bonus categories that change every quarter:
Earn 5% cash back on travel booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.
Earn 3% back at drugstores and restaurants.
Earn 1% back on everything else, except when you ...
Earn 5% back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in bonus categories each quarter you activate (1% back after that).
Through Sept. 30, 2021, for instance, the quarterly bonus categories are grocery stores and select streaming services.
Oh, and you can also earn 5% back on Lyft rides through March 2025. That's potentially a lot of value — but also a lot to track.
U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card
The U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card takes the quarterly bonus cash-back concept and mixes in the ability to customize your rewards categories. You'll earn:
5% cash back on two categories of your choice from a list of several options, on up to $2,000 spent per quarter on combined purchases. (See full list below.)
2% back on an everyday category of your choice, such as gas, groceries or restaurants.
1% back on other purchases.
As with the Chase Freedom Flex℠, you'll have to activate your bonus categories every three months and keep track of multiple categories. But with the U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature® Card, your customizable options are narrower. "Fast food" may qualify for 5% back, for example, not all restaurants. Or "select" clothing stores may net you 5% back, but not every single one.
Another U.S. Bank-issued card — the U.S. Bank Shopper Cash Rewards™ Visa Signature® Card — can be complicated for the same reasons. It, too, requires you to enroll in bonus categories on a quarterly basis in order to lock in the top rewards rates. And it, too, has three rewards tiers and various spending caps to keep track of.
Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards credit card
The Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards credit card also offers the ability to customize your quarterly rewards:
Earn 3% cash back in one of these categories: gas, online shopping, dining, travel, drugstores or home improvement/furnishings.
Earn 2% back at grocery stores and wholesale clubs.
Earn 1% back on everything else.
But those 3% and 2% cash-back earnings are capped each quarter at a combined $2,500 in spending. After that, you’ll earn 1% back in those categories. While your spending caps are measured by the quarter, you can actually change your bonus category once a month.
Redeem your rewards in the form of a statement credit, check, direct deposit into a Bank of America® checking or savings account, or as a contribution to a qualifying Merrill cash management or 529 account.
Speaking of having an existing relationship with Bank of America® or Merrill, if you’re a Preferred Rewards member, you can earn 25% to 75% more cash back on every purchase.
Yotta credit card
Unlike most cash-back cards, the Yotta credit card is a prize-linked financial product. That means you don’t earn guaranteed cash back with each purchase. Instead, you merely earn a 2% chance to have your most recent purchase refunded (the odds increase to 20% if you use the card at participating “Lucky Deal” merchants). You must have a Yotta account to have this card, and any refunds you win will be sent to that account.
The Yotta credit card is a starter card, providing a way to build credit without the risk of getting into debt or making late payments. There’s no credit check as part of the application process, and instead of the security deposit you’d make with a secured credit card, you set your credit limit by moving money in your Yotta account into a “bucket” dedicated to your card. Whatever’s in that bucket is yours to spend, and payments are automatically made on the 15th of each month. So you can’t overspend and you can’t pay late.
These are helpful guardrails if you want a card that keeps you disciplined, but they leave you ill prepared to manage a more traditional credit card where you can get into debt. But it’s those other cards that offer guaranteed cash-back rewards, not just the random chance of a refund.
Also worthy of mention ...
Sometimes, a card's complications come less with earning rewards and more with burning them.
For instance, the Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card technically earns 2X back on all purchases — but only if you opt to deposit your earnings into eligible Fidelity accounts. If you redeem for travel, merchandise, gift cards or a statement credit, point values will vary.
Or consider cards like the SoFi Credit Card and the Sallie Mae Accelerate, which offer cash-back programs that incentivize paying down your student loans and investing. But there are caveats to their seemingly straightforward rewards rates:
The SoFi Credit Card earns 3 points per $1 for a year, and then 2 points per $1 spent on eligible purchases. Those points are worth 1 cent each when deposited as cash into your SoFi Checking and Savings or Invest account, or as a payment toward your SoFi personal or student loan. If you redeem for a statement credit, though, your points are worth half as much.
The Sallie Mae Accelerate earns 2.5% cash back for the first year (on up to $20,000 in spending), then 1.25%. You’ll get a 25% bonus on those points — but only if you redeem them to pay down any federal or private student loan.
» MORE: Review of the SoFi Credit Card
Travel rewards cards
Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card
You know how some coffee shops give out those punch cards that let you caffeinate yourself toward a free 12-ounce medium roast? Sub out the coffee for hotel stays, and you’re closing in on how the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card works. But it gets complicated pretty quickly.
With the credit card, spend $500 in purchases to earn a “stamp” valued at $110.
However, credit card aside, you also earn stamps just by being a member of the Hotels.com loyalty program and booking a stay through Hotels.com. These stamps are valued at the price you paid for the room.
Once you accumulate 10 stamps, you earn a hotel stay — but not for any kind of stay you want. The value of your "reward night" is worth the average value of those 10 stamps you collected. And that average value can vary, depending on how you accumulated your stamps. If it was entirely via credit card spending, you get a hotel stay worth $110. But if not? You may need a calculator handy.
You can only redeem the 10-stamp reward by booking a stay on Hotels.com. You’ll pay taxes, fees and any cost of the room that exceeds the value of the reward. If the room costs less than the value of the reward, you lose out on the difference.
Barclays’ cruise line credit cards
Barclays issues several co-branded credit cards for cruise lines, including:
Terms and conditions vary slightly among the cards, but in general, you redeem rewards in the form of a statement credit to cover eligible purchases, which can include cruise bookings, onboard purchases and, in some cases, airfare.
Simple enough on the surface, but here’s where the water gets choppy: The value of your points can range from 1 to 2.5 cents each depending on how large of a statement credit you request, and on what you choose to redeem the rewards for. For example, with the Holland America Line Rewards Visa® Card:
Redeem $50 to $499.99 for a statement credit redemption value of 1%.
Redeem $500 to $1,499.99 for a redemption value of 1.25%.
Redeem $1,500 to $2,000.99 for a redemption value of 1.50%.
Redeem $2,001 to $4,000.99 for a redemption value of 2.00%.
Redeem $4,001 and up for a redemption value of 2.50%.
But that’s only when you redeem to cover the cost of a Holland America cruise. You can also redeem for airfare or cruises on other World’s Leading Cruise Line brands (including Carnival, Costa, Princess Cruises and more), but the redemption value in that case will only be 1%.
Most travel credit cards do not feature such complex tiered point redemption values, instead offering points that have a fixed redemption value.
Also worthy of mention ...
Several Citi-issued credit cards earn Citi ThankYou rewards, and while such rewards can be valuable — especially for travelers — the rewards program itself can be hard to navigate compared with similar programs from major issuers.
Point values are hard to nail down: Redeeming ThankYou rewards toward travel can potentially earn you outsize value, but redeeming them for cash back/statement credit might slash the value in half.
Transfer partners and transfer ratios vary widely: Depending on your card, you may be able to transfer your ThankYou points to partner airline loyalty programs. But some cards have only one transfer partner, while others have more than a dozen. The transfer ratio, too, can vary. In most cases, it's 1-to-1, meaning 1,000 ThankYou points would be equal to 1,000 airline miles in a partner program. But in other cases, 1,000 ThankYou points may equal only 800 airline miles, depending on the loyalty program. Also, Citi has only one domestic airline partner — JetBlue — so if you aren't ready to learn the ins and outs of Avianca, Cathay Pacific, Etihad and Turkish Airlines, your ThankYou points may be hard to use this way.
A head-scratching store card
Sam's Club® Mastercard®
The Sam's Club® Mastercard® earns up to 5% cash back at Sam’s Club, but there are several caveats.
First, to earn that rate, you must be a Sam’s Club Plus member, which costs $100 a year. (At the lower-tier Club membership level, which costs $45 per year, you’d earn only 1% back on Sam’s Club purchases, quite a poor rate. Any number of cards earn at least 1.5% back on all purchases.)
Secondly, the card's 5% rate at Sam's Club is actually a combination of rates: 2% back for being a Plus member, and 3% back for using the Sam's Club® Mastercard®. And that split means there's even more to keep track of:
While the 3% back from the card applies to Sam's Club purchases in-store or online, the 2% back via your Plus membership doesn't apply to purchases made via samsclub.com.
The 2% rate you earn as a Plus member is capped at $500 in rewards a year. (Total rewards-earning ability for all purchases is capped at $5,000 a year.)
The 2% is also subject to a $2,000 overall "maximum balance." Once you hit that, you must reduce that balance (by redeeming rewards) in order to earn any more.
As if all that weren't enough to manage, the card also earns 5% back on gas on up to $6,000 in spending per year (then 1%). Plus, you'll earn 3% back on dining.
Find the right credit card for you.
Whether you want to pay less interest or earn more rewards, the right card's out there. Just answer a few questions and we'll narrow the search for you.
