CCU – Cash Rebate Card Review $100 Bonus + 3% Cash Back On Grocery Store Purchases

Consumer Credit Union offers a card called the Visa Signature Cash Rebate Card which currently offers a $100 sign up bonus and 3% cash back on “Grocery/Convenience Store” purchases. I thought I’d be a good idea to do a mini review of this card given all the recent Old AmEx Blue shut downs and the fact they’ve now limited you to $50,000 in purchases per year.

[Read: Best credit card for grocery expenses]

Key Selling Points

• $100 sign up bonus
• 3% cash back on all grocery & convenience store purchases
• No annual fee

Earning Rates

The platinum card earns at the following rates:

• 3% cash rebate on “Grocery/Convenience Store” purchases
• 2% cash rebate on “gas” purchases [Read: best credit cards for gas purchases]
• 1% cash rebate on all other purchases [Read: best credit cards for non bonused spend]

The rebate is automatically deposited into your account each month. There is a limit of $6,000 in rewards that you can earn annually, which means you could spend up to $200,000 on grocery/convenience store purchases. Update: Starting in January 2016, the max is much lower.

Sign Up Bonuses

This card comes with two “special offers”, they are:

• $100 account credit if you make $1,000 in purchases within 60 days of account opening
• 0% APR on balance transfers and purchases for the first six months. There are also no balance transfer fees.

What Credit Bureau Do They Pull?

It’s hard to know because there isn’t a lot of data points. They pull Equifax for their checking accounts but credit boards shows that they pulled TransUnion for both of the credit card applications that they have data for.

If you’ve applied for this card, let us know who they pulled in the comments and what state you applied from.

Who can apply for this card?

Anybody can apply for this card, it doesn’t appear you need to even be a member of CCU to apply.

We’re  unsure on what credit score is needed for this card as Credit Karma doesn’t provide any data on this and Credit Boards doesn’t have any data for this specific card. That being said credit unions are usually pretty lenient so as long as you have a FICO above 700, I think you’d be ok.

Our Verdict

There are a lot of cash sign up bonuses that are higher than the $100 being offered, but I think there are two reasons this card is worth considering:

• It earns 3% cash back on grocery/convenience store purchases
• Consumer credit union also offers a rewards checking account that earns up to 5.09% on up to $20,000 in deposits. One of the requirements is $1,000 per month on a CCU issued credit card (more on this tomorrow)

At the moment I’m not doing heavy manufactured spending at grocery stores and I already have some rewards checking accounts which cover my emergency fund so I’ll probably give this a miss. Once my work tells me what my leave will be like for 2015 and if I’ll be working mostly internationally or in the US I might change my mind. What do you think of this card? If you’re doing MS at grocery stores you might be interested in this list of grocery stores that sell $500 gift cards.