BBVA Compass NBA TripleDouble American Express Card Review: 5x Everywhere & 20,000 Point Bonus

Recently BBVA Compass announced that they were going to offer a NBA co-branded credit card, this called is officially called the BBVA Compass NBA American Express Card Featuring TripleDouble Rewards. This card has finally launched, so I decided to take a look at to see if it was any good. Here are the main features you should keep in mind:

  • No annual fee
  • 20,000 bonus points when you spend $500 or more in qualifying transactions within the first 90 days of account opening
  • 20% off anytime you use your card at NBAstore.com
  • Card earns at the following rates:
    • 5x points during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals
    • 3x points on qualifying NBA tickets, NBA in-stadium transactions and NBAStore.com transactions
    • 2x points at supermarkets and gas stations
    • 1x points on all other purchases
  • 0% introductory APR on purchases for first six months
  • 0%-3.99% intro balance transfer APR for 12 months (there is a $10 or 4% fee whichever is greater for balance transfers)

bbva compass nba card with doubletriple rewards

How Much Are Points Worth

Points can be redeemed for the following:

  • Cash back
  • Statement credits
  • Merchandise
  • Tickets
  • Gift cards
  • VIP experiences

Points are worth one penny each when redeeming for cash back or statement credit and you must redeem a minimum of 2,500 points ($25) at a time. At the moment BBVA Compass don’t make the rest of the reward catalog public, but we do know how much some items will cost in points:

  • One year subscription to Hoop magazine: 1,500 points
  • NBA2K15 game: 5,500 points
  • TV (unknown brand/model): 567,750 points
  • Pizza for the family: 2,500 points
  • Home theater sound system: 455,250 points
  • NBA locker room experience for you and three friends: 500,000 points
  • Face to face experience with one of your favorite NBA stars: 1,000,000 points
  • One on one meeting with James Harden or Kevin Durant: 1,300,000 points

Things Of Interest

Given that you can earn at least 2% cash back on all purchases, there are really only a few things of interest with this card:

  • 20% discount on NBAstore.com purchases. My first thought was I wonder if you can purchase giftcards and resell them for a profit, but the resell rate is 70% of facevalue so you’d be loosing money. The best discount you can get on purchasing these gift cards is only 11%, so if you did actually shop there often you’d be saving some money but most people find the NBAstore to be overpriced. As with the spending bonus you’d really be getting a 23% discount.
  • 10,000 point sign up bonus. As mentioned before, points are worth about 1¢ each making this sign up bonus worth $100. In the scheme of things this is pretty low for a cash sign up bonus and even worse when you consider the annual fee of $50 is not waived the first year.
  • 5x points during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals. To begin with I wasn’t sure on whether you’d earn 5x on just NBA purchases or all purchases, but in their F.A.Q they state the following (emphasis mine):

plus earn 5X points on all purchases (not just NBA purchases) during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA Finals.

5x Everywhere

Obviously how useful the 5x everywhere is will depend on what credit limit BBVA give you, how tolerant they are to large spend and if you can pay off your card mid cycle without issue. We can answer the credit limit question somewhat as BBVA offer other credit cards. One card they’ve offered in the past is the BBVA Compass ClearPoint credit card, if we have a look at creditboards credit pull application we can see that there are 8 data points for this card.

Highest Limit Lowest Limit Average Limit
$15,000 4,000 $12,328.57

NBA All Star Weekend Dates

Unfortunately All Star Weekend has already passed for 2015, so we won’t be able to get 5x during that time this year.

  • 2016: 14th, February
  • 2015: 15th, February
  • 2014: 16th February
  • 2013: 17th February

Presumably this means you’ll earn 5x points on both the Saturday and Sunday.

NBA Finals

  • 2014-2015: June 4th – 14th
  • 2013-2014: June 5th – 15th
  • 2012-2013: June 6th – 20th

F.A.Q’s

What Credit Bureau Do BBVA Compass Pull?

Another advantage to this card is that they pull TransUnion (which at least where I live is the least used credit bureau). In one case they pulled Equifax, but that person had frozen their Experian & TransUnion credit reports. At least one report of them pulling Experian in the comments.

Is There A Limit To The Amount Of Points You Can Earn?

There are no limits to the amount of points that you can earn. Points also do not expire as long as your account is open and in good standing.

Card Designs

Eastern Conference

eastern confernece

Western Conference

western conference

Eligiblity

This card is issued by BBVA Compass, they accept residents that are over the age of 18 from all states except Iowa, Utah & Wisconsin. Those living in Alabama & Nebraska must be 19 and those in Mississippi must be 21.

Final Thoughts

This is a very good card, $200 sign up bonus and 5x everywhere twice a year. In my experience it’s a bit of a hassle with the 5x everywhere during the valid dates, but it’s worth the trouble. I signed up for the following two reasons:

  • It’s a TransUnion credit pull. I barely have any hard pulls on my TransUnion credit report, so having another really won’t affect me that much.
  • It offers 5x everywhere twice a year with a bit of hassle. Nothing really runs smoothly with BBVA, so expect fraud alerts and things not posting as 5x everywhere correctly.

Some people they will be much better off getting a credit card that has a high cash sign up bonus or a card that earns 5% cash back in select categories year round.

 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

75 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

Ben
Ben (@guest_327485)
December 15, 2016 12:37

Does BBVA backdate AUs to primary card open date or not? I would like to add myself to my wife’s card but don’t want to impact 5/24 status.

David
David (@guest_260740)
May 20, 2016 12:56

Could you please confirm the NBA final dates for 2016?

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
May 20, 2016 13:13
Trevor
Trevor (@guest_245620)
April 14, 2016 02:54

FYI….also need to update that the card is limited to maximum of $5k/”event” for 5x.

5x points on all purchases, including non-NBA related items, during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals, for the first $5,000 per event1,2

https://www.bbvacompass.com/nbacard/

Check the “Benefits” tab.

Moriah
Moriah (@guest_231545)
March 7, 2016 20:38

Hi, a lot of the information you have depicted here is no longer valid. There is no longer an annual fee, for one. And it pulls your Experian credit report, not your Transunion. There are more discrepancies, but those are the main 2 I wanted to point out

Raymond
Raymond (@guest_214865)
January 6, 2016 18:09

Can anyone confirm that the 5% rewards were actually received during the 2015 All Star Weekend and Finals? I haven’t seen many data points on this.

Trevor
Trevor (@guest_245621)
April 14, 2016 02:55

Yes, I can confirm both my wife and myself received all reward points for all spend. We ended up getting throttled b/c of supposed fraud alerts, but we each got about 100k points.

Eric
Eric (@guest_204203)
December 1, 2015 01:10

Did anyone else get an email from BBVA today about an offer for $50 for spending $1K online? Do you think loading Serve would count?

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
December 1, 2015 01:15

Post about it tomorrow morning 🙂

ENOTTY
ENOTTY (@guest_194023)
November 5, 2015 21:56

Anyone notice that the travel rewards got removed from the reward website? It’s just NBA experiences and cashback now.

tang
tang (@guest_146258)
July 16, 2015 13:18

Anyone knows how to sign up for Amex offers for this card? It seems that BBVA is another bank using different systems..

Eric
Eric (@guest_139941)
June 29, 2015 19:42

I just logged into my rewards account and see that I am still owed a lot of points. The last time I received 5X points was 6 days ago. I don’t want to complain if there’s still a chance it will post automatically. Is anyone else in the same boat?

Phill the Points All Around
Phill the Points All Around (@guest_139990)
June 29, 2015 21:56

Looks like mine just posted today….Numbers jumped dramatically still have to make sure they are giving me 5X on grocery purchases as well since there system recognizes them as 2X.

Eric
Eric (@guest_139993)
June 29, 2015 22:03

What happened for me is they gave me the 2X AND the 5X meaning I got 6% cash back on all grocery purchases. Hopefully the rest of my points will post soon.

Chucks
Chucks (@guest_136920)
June 20, 2015 17:43

[DATAPOINT]: Was approved for BBVA NBA card with 30k limit. 380k income listed. Score in the 770-790 range. No previous BBVA relationship.

Parimally
Parimally (@guest_221636)
February 1, 2016 18:20

Seriously? Thats like saying birds can fly. Keep your obviously gonna get approved comments for the country club