22 Things Everybody Should Know About U.S. Bank Credit Cards

US Bank doesn’t have the the most enticing credit card offerings, but they do have a few credit cards worth applying for. Before doing so (or if you already have one of their credit cards) there are a few (

  1. Before applying for any US Bank credit cards, you freeze your SageStream & ARS credit reports. US Bank checks these reports, but it doesn’t seem to help in the approval process at all, just another reason to deny you. Although you will need to have these unfrozen when you sign up for a US Bank checking account (they sometimes offer promotional bonuses, don’t need to be unfrozen if applying in branch).
  2. (Not currently able to check pre-approvals for US Bank) US Bank allows you to view your pre-approved offers before applying. This can be useful for people that don’t have great credit, just remember that this doesn’t guarantee pre-approval.
  3. There is at least one data point of US Bank merging multiple inquiries in the same day into a single hard pull. That being said, US Bank is quite difficult to get approved with.
  4. There is no hard limit to the amount of US Bank credit cards you can hold. But keep in mind that the more cards you have with them, the more difficult it is to get approved.
  5. If you are denied for a credit card with US Bank, make sure you call their reconsideration department. You won’t always get approved, but it’s worth a call anyway. If you haven’t called reconsideration before, read these tips first.
  6. US Bank won’t agree to pull a different credit report if you have the one they want to use frozen. You can’t eve  give them a PIN to access the frozen report.
  7. It’s possible to churn US Bank credit cards. Just keep in mind they are such sticklers when it comes to approval.
  8. US Bank reports your credit utilization based on what it is on the 1st of each month. This is useful to know if you need to reduce your credit utilization for FICO score purposes.
  9. You can also change your statement closing date. It might make sense to change it to just before the end of the month, that way you’ll always show a low balance (as mentioned above).
  10. When it comes to credit limits, US Bank is quite weird. They will usually do a soft pull when using the online form or via phone but this is no longer always the case. For reallocations, they don’t seem to offer them anymore
  11. If US Bank increases the sign up bonus of one of their cards that you’ve recently applied for, they should match it. US Bank don’t mess with their sign up bonuses often, so we don’t have a lot of data on them but it’s worth a try.
  12. If you cancel your card within 30 days of the annual fee posting, they’ll refund it for you. Can be useful if you forget to cancel the card before the annual fee hits.
  13. You can’t product change between brands (e.g Club Carlson to Cash+). If you do want to downgrade a US Bank branded card, then the Cash+ card is likely to be your best option with your choice of 5% categories (even if most of the good ones are gone).
  14. US Bank offers a referral program. If you want to refer one of your friends to one of their cards, then you can get a bonus of up to 10,000 points per referral.
  15. When meeting minimum spend requirements, the clock starts when your card is approved.
  16. Spend on authorized user accounts doesn’t count for minimum spend requirements. Only spend on the primary card counts.
  17. US Bank will usually waive the annual fee on FlexPerks cards when calling retention. Actually they’ll just give you enough points to offset the annual fee, but same difference really (actually a little better since you could pay the AF in cash and then use the points to get more than that value in travel redemption).
  18. It’s not possible to get sign up bonuses paid out earlier than expected. So make sure you apply with plenty of time before you want to redeem those points/miles.
  19. US Bank waives the fees on their checking account if you have one of their credit cards. This is useful when they are offering a sign up bonus on those accounts. Personal credit cards will waive the fees on personal accounts and business credit cards will waive the fee on business accounts.
  20. US Bank doesn’t report business credit cards to the personal credit bureaus which is useful for keeping your credit report cleaner.
  21. You cannot check your application status with U.S. Bank online, instead you must call them on (800) 947-1444.
  22. If you have auto-pay set up with U.S. bank they will pay the full statement balance if you make a partial payment, we’re unsure what they will do if you make the full payment. 

You can view other posts in this series by clicking the links below.

If you want to discuss any of this in the comments, please do so. I’d recommend not referring to each item by it’s number, as that changes as we add in more/remove others.

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Abc
Abc (@guest_1813024)
March 13, 2024 11:53

Apparently there are two stages in their approval process: identity verification then credit underwriting, handled by two different departments. If either of those fail to clear immediately, they will put your application in pending. The phone number to the authentication department is a different number from the “recon” number listed in many places, which leads to their credit underwriting department. If you call the wrong number they will simply reroute you (which is annoying if you dropped and need to be put on hold another time to get rerouted). During verification, they will ask you some questions and send a text message to your registered phone number (for existing account holders). If you pass verification, the applications goes over to underwriting and will be processed automatically. Unless you have a problem with that also, you don’t need to speak with the credit person. So if your application goes on hold, don’t panic. Call them and answering a few questions might make your application flow faster.

You might also want to log into your account when applying, because a lot of times when they see you have an existing account (same email, phone number, or social) but not logged in, they will want to verify you.

joe
joe (@guest_1806110)
March 1, 2024 11:51

Any new DPs regarding churning? I closed my Biz leverage a month ago and just received a targeted offer via mail today for $750 w/ 7500 spend

beat2def
beat2def (@guest_1797655)
February 14, 2024 13:41

Just tried to cancel my Altitude Connect biz card with U.S. Bank.
First rep, “You have to pay your annual fee first.”
Me, “I have 30 days since the annual fee hit (one week ago) and they refund the annual fee.”
Rep, “that’s incorrect. You have to pay the annual fee, banks don’t reimburse annual fees.”
Me, “every bank in the history of the universe reimburses the annual fee.”
Rep, “not U.S. Bank. I’ve never heard of that with U.S. Bank”
Me *hangs up and calls again*

New Rep, “okay, sir, we’ll cancel your card and remove that annual fee. You should see that reflected on the next statement. Would you like a letter sent to your address?”

Always, call again if you don’t like one moron rep’s response.

I went ahead an canceled all my U.S. Bank biz cards; U.S. Bank gives me a headache.

joe
joe (@guest_1806107)
March 1, 2024 11:46

Cancelled mine last week and the rep was grilling me for no damn reason. I said in the beginning that I’d like to close my card and have the fee refunded then she proceeded to ask every single personal question then at the end she was like do you want to close the account or the card, I was like “huh?” then she gives me the nastiest attitude and goes LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN closing the card means you just the card will stop working and closing the account will get the fee refunded. Probably the worst experience I’ve ever had with a rep

beat2def
beat2def (@guest_1806242)
March 1, 2024 14:47

Probably same person. LOL.

John
John (@guest_1792716)
February 4, 2024 17:16

Is it hard to get Skypass business card?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob (@guest_1785062)
January 24, 2024 18:32

Another issue: US Bank Business card Triple Cash might code as CA when using it to fund a bank account. Happened to me with One AZ CU. Edit: and was fortunately declined.

Jack
Jack (@guest_1779611)
January 17, 2024 10:57

Could you please add a note that U.S. Bank don’t like people to buy a lot of gift cards? A recent DP on Reddit showed that someone’s credit card was shut down/closed because they bought a lot of gift cards. They bought 6.5k gift cards on a 14k credit limit. Thanks Will or Chuck  William Charles  Chuck
https://www.reddit.com/r/USbank/comments/17d4f1i/us_bank_is_the_worst_credit_card_financial/

Jack
Jack (@guest_1779612)
January 17, 2024 10:58
Matt A
Matt A (@guest_1738031)
November 16, 2023 11:45

@William One thing I would add to this list is that apparently US Mint purchases do not earn any rewards. I have triple cash and leverage and they both did not give me any points or cash back from my US Mint purchases. I am going to call and see if I can get it fixed as it is not excluded anywhere on the T&C. I am worried that it is also not going to count towards the minimum spend too.

Matt A
Matt A (@guest_1746583)
November 27, 2023 18:53

So I finally got a letter in the mail and US Mint purchase will not get any point or cash back on any of US Banks cards. Guess they never got over the $1 coin churning 23 years ago. They did say it does count towards my minimum spend so that is good.

Drew2024
Drew2024 (@guest_1773248)
January 8, 2024 10:09

I’m being told my Business Leverage bonus is denied due to US Mint purchases. This is after calling two different reps who both confirmed I’d met the minimum spend. Escalating now but not super optimistic. Bad on me for not reading the T&Cs, but I’ll still probably file a CFPB complaint since they didn’t know what they were talking about when I called.

Also, both US Mint purchases are coded as “Shopping” on my account.

Matt A
Matt A (@guest_1773330)
January 8, 2024 11:52

I was told they would count, but I hit my minimum spend on my leverage (6 weeks ago) and triple cash (8 weeks ago) and have not gotten the bonus yet. I could not see any DP on how fast they normally pay out.

Definitely will be only using us bank cards for churning now. I buy a lot of the us mint and this is crazy. I think they are the only one that still does this, even small banks and credit unions I have had zero issues with.

Matt A
Matt A (@guest_1777929)
January 14, 2024 22:13

So I still have time on my bonus and as soon as I hit the minimum spend with non us mint purchases the bonus went into my pending rewards.

US Mint purchases count towards nothing with US Bank.

vc
vc (@guest_1746663)
November 27, 2023 21:41

“it is not excluded anywhere on the T&C”

There’s nothing about cash-like transactions not counting?

…I was curious, so I checked their site. “Ineligible codes1…5972 STAMP & COIN STORES” Was that it?

Matt A
Matt A (@guest_1747431)
November 29, 2023 01:14
  vc

This is the letter I got. I actually got multiple as they sent one for every card I have with them.

https://imgur.com/a/8eVvfSo

Marlene
Marlene (@guest_1716497)
October 16, 2023 15:24

Re: #22. I’m set up for auto-pay for the full statement balance. I had made a couple payments early do free up available credit and the auto-pay adjusted accordingly. Maybe they changed this? This was the Business Leverage card.

DrRyan
DrRyan (@guest_1644901)
June 30, 2023 17:31

Just adding some data points….
Approved 25k credit limit. Froze Lexus Nexus and ARS on 6/26, applied at usbank.com for world mastercard elite version of Business Triple Cash Rewards 6/27 (late afternoon), called status line daily, approved 6/30 (afternoon). Have an EIN for sole proprietorship, but used SSN. Only pulled TransUnion (Eq and Ex were NOT locked and NOT pulled) and Have 1 new card opened 7 months ago and 1 new car loan opened 2 months ago. Opened a business banking checking out for bonus earlier this month (June 2023). No additional information was requested, and even when calling underwriting number, they told me there was nothing that could be done to speed up the approval process. Just trying to provide a data point with all the information that I wanted to know through the process – this has by far been the slowest application process I have ever done and causes some anxiety. Happy to finally be approved.

007
007 (@guest_1598426)
April 15, 2023 11:06

E statements for business credit cards? First month of biz leverage, received e statement for central bill account but PAPER statement for the card itself. No way to turn on e statements for card itself (ie non central bill account) on personal or business us bank log ins. Is this a first month thing only, or do they always mail a paper statement for the card itself no matter whether or not e statements is on for central bill account? Thanks!

Zalmy
Zalmy (@guest_1633044)
June 12, 2023 07:58

Did you find out how to do this?

007
007 (@guest_1633069)
June 12, 2023 09:10

I think it was just a first month thing.