Discover Extends Double Cashback Offer for New Cardmembers, Should We Bite?

Discover offers to double all the cashback earned on the Discover IT card at years end. This means that your 1% cashback is effectively 2% and any cashback earned from the Discover Deals shopping portal or from quarterly categories or from any other promotional offer will be doubled.

End Date of Offer

The offer was initially being reported as being valid until the end of July and then to the end of September. We’ve now gotten confirmation from Discover that the offer will be around until the end of the year.

@Chucksth Good news, we have pushed this promotion out until the end of December for new customers. Have a great week! *Jacy

— Discover (@Discover) September 10, 2015

Most likely, this double cashback offer will go on indefinitely as an added signup bonus, similar to the double miles offer on Discover IT Miles which seems to have the doubling as a standard signup bonus offer.

@Chucksth Great news! The Double Miles has also been extended until the end of this year for all new cardmembers. *Jess

— Discover (@Discover) September 10, 2015

Should We Bite?

We’ve had a slew of posts on Discover recently:

• Discover 10% Bonus with Apple Pay, $2,000 Profit per Discover Card!
• 22% Cashback with Discover and Apple Pay (23% with DIM, 30% at Department Stores)
• Which Q4 5% Discover Categories Accept Apple Pay?
• Discover Referral Links Go Here
• Discover Extends Double Cashback Offer for New Cardmembers, Should We Bite?
• Discover’s Apple Pay Deal and the New Gift Card Exclusion

The excitement here is the new offer to get up to $1,000 cashback on Discover when using Apple Pay, for a total of $2,200 at years end on the Discover cashback card or $2,300 at years end on the Discover IT Miles card.

Each person can have two Discover cards; you can sign up for a second so long as you didn’t get the first one within a year. And you can even have two of the same type; for example, you can have two Discover cashback cards.

With this amazing promotion going on, many of us (myself included) are contemplating getting a second Discover card. This will allow us to get $4,400 in cashback instead of $2,200. If you opt for the Discover IT Miles card, the total would be $4,500.

That’s a lot of money.

My initial plan had been to signup for a second Discover card after my year of double cashback finishes (July 2016 for me). Of course, there’s no guarantee that the offer will still be around – we only have confirmation through the end of the year – but I was going to risk it. The calculation here is that the double cashback offer is extremely valuable due to the fact that the Discover Deals portal will be doubled as well. Only the Discover cahsback card has the Deals portal, so I was planning on going for that one.

Now…all bets are off. With this new Apple Pay promo, it could make more sense to get the second Discover card now and take advantage of the extra $2,000 cashback offer. This depends on how much you value the doubling of the Discover portal (and referrals). For most people, the Apple Pay promo is probably better, especially given the fact that we don’t have a guarantee that the double cashback offer will even be around coming mid next year.

Timing your Application

Although for many of us the smartest thing is probably to get a second Discover card now, let’s talk about timing…

Instead of applying for the Discover card now, it seems logical to push off the application for a month or two. Remember that the Apple Pay offer is up until year’s end. We’ll obviously need to give some time to be able to manufacture $10,000 in spend, depending on your credit limit and your spend tolerance, but it makes sense to push it off as long as your tolerance allows. This will give you an extra month or two of doubling the Deals portal next year.

For some, it would make more sense to apply for the Discover card at the end of November. Personally, I won’t push it off that far as I don’t know what my Discover credit limit will be and I like doing things a little slower.

Tips and Order

Tip: You should be able to transfer over some of your credit limit from one card to the other. In the post, Rules For Reallocating Your Credit Limit With Each Credit Card Issuer we wrote that it’s possible to move over some of your credit to a new Discover card.

Best Practice:

• Spend $10,000 using Apple Pay starting immediately on September 16 when the promo starts
• After finishing the $10k, apply for a second Discover cashback card as close to the end of the year as you are comfortable with
• Transfer over a chunk of you credit line onto the new card to simplify the $10K on the second card

Advantages of this method:

• You’ll have your full credit line on card #1 to do the first $10k
• You’ll extend the length of your double cashback offer since card #2 was gotten at a later date (this will extend your ability to double the Deals portal)
• You’ll have a higher credit limit to use on the second card

If the Deals portal isn’t important to you, then you’d do the same approach but you’ll apply for the Discover IT Miles as your second card instead of Discover cashback. This way, you’ll get an extra 1% cashback on all your spend. The 1% is in fact significant and will amount to at least $100 when doing the $10k spend. And you’ll have a 3% card for the whole year. After year’s end, you should be able to convert the Miles card into a cashback card to take advantage of quarterly categories.