BBVA NBA 5% Cash Back on All Purchases this Weekend [Feb. 17-19] + Spending Tips

This Friday through Sunday (2/17-2/19), the BBVA card offers 5% cash back on up to $5,000 in purchases.

Background

The BBVA NBA card offers 5% cash back on all purchases during NBA All-Star weekend and during the two week of NBA finals

The 5% cash back used to be uncapped, but starting 2017 it has a cap of $5,000 in purchases per period. Going forward, we can max this out by spending $5,000 and getting $250 back during All-Star weekend, and another $5,000/$250 during the Finals.

The BBVA NBA card is no longer available for signups, but many of us already have the card and can continue taking advantage of the 5% offer.

Exact Dates

The exact dates for the 5% period for All-Star 2017 are February 17th, 18th, and 19th. It begins with EST and ends with PST, 75 hours total.

Hi Chuck, the exact dates are 12:01 AM EST on Feb 17th, ending
at 11:59 PST on Feb 19th. Thank you ~MM

— BBVA in the USA (@BBVA_USA) February 13, 2017

 

Spending Tips

Here are a few ideas to max out the $5,000 in spend:

• Buy Visa gift cards at CVS or Simon Mall. Net around 4% after the fees if you have an easy liquidation method.
• Pay your federal tax bill for a 1.87% convenience fee. Net ~3.2%. Federal tax payment
• Pay out your bills for the year. Some ideas are insurance, utilities, and tuition if they allow using an Amex. Net an extra 3% on what you’d get had you paid the bill with a 2% card.
• Use Plastiq to pay any bill which you can’t typically be paid with credit for a 2% convenience fee. Examples include things like mortgage, rent, loans, and some insurances or utilities which don’t take credit card. Net ~3%. Update: @AKCuse23 tells us that last time around BBVA did not honor the 5% for Plastiq payments. Other comments to this post indicate that it’s YMMV depending on the payee.
• Add your own ideas in the comments.

In previous promotions, the following things worked for me to get 5x: federal tax payment (pay1040), Geico, Raise, Cardpool, target.com (with and without Paypal), and a Rite Aid store purchase.

Online Spend

One thing to keep in mind is that for online orders, the charge isn’t always considered as having been done on the date of purchase, depending when and how it’s processed. This is compounded by the fact that two of the three promo days are non-business days when orders are less likely to be processed.

Any purchase swiped in a store should be fine all the way until the deadline. If you want to try an online order, definitely do it as early as possible, like Friday morning.

Things like paying taxes are less risky, despite being done online, since there isn’t really any processing time (no goods to be shipped, etc.) so that will hopefully work even if it’s done on that last day. Still safer to do it as early as possible.

As for using Plastiq, my recent experience was that I paid my health insurance via Plastiq late at night on February 8, and Plastiq sent me an email on February 12 that the payment was sent. On my credit card statement, it shows the charge as posted on February 9. So I’m guessing Plastiq payments will be fine if done on Friday. Not sure what will happen if it’s done on Saturday or Sunday.

Final Thoughts

The new $5,000 limitation which now goes into effect obviously makes the card less exciting. For those of us who have the card, it’s worth trying to rack up $5k in spend and get what we can.

If you’ve had trouble getting the 5% back on any specific purchase during previous promos, please let us know in the comments so we’ll know what to avoid.