Update: Card currently comes with a $100 sign up bonus, making it more attractive.
Fidelity recently decided to switch their credit card from FIA card services (Bank of America) to Elan Services (U.S Bank). I haven’t done a thorough review of this card and how it compares to the previous card offered in the past yet, so here goes.
Card Basics
- Card earns 2x points for all purchases, no limit on the amount of points you can earn and no expiry
- No annual fee
- No sign up bonus
- 14.24% APR
- 1% foreign transaction fee
- EMV chip with signature
- Runs on the Visa payment network
How Much Are Points Worth?
We know that if you deposit these points into any of the following accounts you’ll receive 1¢ per point. You need a minimum of 5,000 points ($50) to redeem.
- Brokerage account
- Fidelity® Cash Management Account
- Fidelity-managed 529 College Savings plan
- Retirement account
One of the advantages of the old American Express Fidelity card is that it earned WorldPoints, which are worth up to a maximum of 1.76¢ a piece. U.S Bank offers the FlexPerks program, with points being worth up to 2¢ per point, unfortunately this card does not earn these points directly.  It’s still possible that you might be able to transfer these points into an account that earns FlexPerks, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me so I doubt that it’s possible.
Existing Cardholders
If you’re an existing cardholder with the American Express card, chances are your question can be answered by reading the linked F.A.Q’s. I think the transition is a net loss for existing cardholders, before we were able to take advantage of AmEx sync offers (and Serve online loads when that was working for most people) and also had access to the WorldPoints program. On the bright side, we will be able use this card at Costco when they move from American Express to Visa on April 1st, 2016.
Our Verdict
More and more card issuers are coming out with 2% cash back cards these days, this is probably one of the better cards – although I’d love it if they dropped the foreign transaction fee to 0%. It’ll be interesting to see if they ever offer a sign up bonus on this card and what type of credit criteria they have for this card and what credit limits they have extended. If you’ve applied for this card since the switch, let us know more of this information in the comments and we’ll add it to the post.
