BBVA revamped their app with some new features, and they’re also sending out a great holiday spend offer to cardholders.
BBVA Wallet
BBVA Bank has a credit card that many of us have. They’ve now launched a mobile app called BBVA Wallet which allows you to manage your BBVA credit and debit card activity. This new app has a few neat features, such as a Block Card option (copied from Discover’s Freeze IT option). They also send you instant notifications of all purchases if you enable notifications on the phone.
Oddly, when you login on mobile you’ll probably have to set up your credentials again. You can use the same credentials that you use to login online, but choose the Enroll Now and act as if you are enrolling for the first time.
I ran into some hiccups along the way, especially with the security questions, but eventually I managed to complete the app setup.
Notifications
We’ll get to the offer details in a moment, but for now let’s note that when you setup the app be sure to enable notifications on the phone. You’re going to need that to take part in the offer. If you didn’t enable, you can go into the phone settings and enable afterward.
After completing the offer below, you can disable the notifications.
Real-Time Rewards
As part of the app, you can now redeem rewards in real-time at the time of purchase. The way it works is you complete the purchase as usual, whether it’s in-store or online, and the app will send you a notification of the purchase on your phone. At that point, there will be a Redeem option to click and instantly redeem the purchase for the reward points that you have earned previously.
Kind of cool, to be honest.
Not all purchases get the Real-Time Redemption option – only signatureless purchases. Here are the terms of which purchases qualify for Real-Time Redemption: “Internet purchase, phone or mail order purchase, bill payment, contactless purchase (purchase made by holding your BBVA Compass Visa Card or other device up to a secure reader instead of swiping your card), or small-dollar purchase for which you are not required to sign.”
In my case, I had 250 points unredeemed which are worth $2.50. I did a $1 Amazon reload to see if it would work, and nothing happened. Then I realized that I need to have notifications enabled to use the feature. After taking care of that, I purchased another $1 Amazon reload and this time the Redeem option popped up as expected and I was able to redeem $1 toward the Amazon purchase.
Within a few minutes, my point balance was showing my point balance down to 150 points available. The $1 credit should show in the account activity within a day or two, I imagine.
The Offer
BBVA is sending out an offer via email. If you didn’t get the offer, it might not work for you (although I suspect it will).
Complete the following two actions and receive bonus points:
- Make purchases. There are two tiers to this bonus
- Spend $1,000 in online purchases and receive 5,000 bonus points, or $50.
- Spend $500 in online purchases and receive 2,500 bonus points, or $25.
- Download the app and make at least one Real-Time Rewards Redemption (described above). You just need to make one redemption to meet this requirement. Minimum redemption amount is 100 points, or $1.
The Fine Print
- Offer requirements must be met between 11/30/15 – 12/19/15
- Bonus points will be awarded within 90 days after promotion end date
Our Verdict
The app setup was a hassle, to be honest, but you should be able to get an excellent ROI for the 15-minutes spent on that. By making $1,000 in purchases, you’ll get the standard 1% back in rewards, plus a bonus $50 added. Total will be 6% back on $1,000 in spend.
Some people may want to meet the spend on this offer by loading Serve. It will probably work, but loading of prepaid cards is often excluded in BBVA terms. Personally, I have no problem spending $1,000 in online purchases, and I’ll just go that route so as not to risk it.
Since signing up for the BBVA Amex card earlier this year, I have not regretted it for a moment. Card benefits:
- 5x rewards for a few weeks of the year
- $100 signup bonus
- it’s a fee-free Amex for the purpose of Amex Offers
- a few of these limited-time offers pop up per year, such as this $50 offer
- no annual fee
See our full review of the card here.
