Last December, Discover introduced a new 1% cashback rewards offer for using the debit card associated with a Discover Cashback Checking account, up to $30 cashback per month. Today, Discover sent out an email indicating updated terms on the account (new terms can be found on this PDF). The new terms exclude certain transactions from earning cashback.
The following transactions are now excluded:
- ATM transactions (I assume this was always the case)
- The purchase of money orders or cash equivalents
- Cash over portions of point-of-sale transactions
- Loan payments
- Prepaid card funding
- Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments are not eligible for cash back rewards
- In addition, purchases made using third-party payment accounts (services such as Venmo and PayPal, who also provide P2P payments) may not be eligible for cash back rewards
Venmo allows using a debit card free for peer payments, and that’s now excluded. Loan payments via Plastiq or other bill payment services are excluded in the terms, as are prepaid card funding, and likely bank account funding.
No idea if these new restrictions are actually being actually enforced or not. Looks like tax payments are not excluded so that idea can still be used to turn a small profit. I’m sure there are still other possible plays as well.
Hat tip to ram16x on r/churning
[Post has been updated]
