You’ll have to excuse me for the annoying click bait title, but currently the MERRILL+ credit card is offering a sign up bonus of 50,000 points and I don’t think this card and bonus is getting as much attention as it deserves. You don’t need an existing relationship with Merrill Lynch to get approved (as evidenced by all the comments here).
The points themselves are quite useful, you can redeem them for 1¢ per point towards statement credit (giving you a minimum bonus of $500 cash). Or you can redeem them for airfare. When redeeming for airfare you have to redeem a minimum of 25,000 points, here’s how that works:
American Airlines, British Airways, Delta Airlines & United Airlines allow you to redeem 25,000 points for up to $500 in flights (2¢ in value)All other airlines allow you to redeem 30,000 points for up to $500 in flights (1.67¢ in value)
No longer true, basically all airlines get you 2¢ per point now. We discuss this in more detail here.
If your flight is over $500 then you pay 1¢ in addition (in increments of 2,500). These flights also earn miles & elite qualifying miles. The card doesn’t have an annual fee either. So basically you’re getting a minimum of $500 in value for $3,000 in spend and up to $1,000 if you can get flights to work for you. Card is issued through Bank of America, so all the usual rules apply. I’d recommend reading through this linked post and also the comments section.
Woohoo! Just got approved for Merrill+ (Alaska and BBR still pending). 10 inquiries (8 new cc accts + 2 denials the last six months). Alask and BBR will probably be denied.
Planning to apply for BoFa Travel Credit card and Merrill Lynch + card to gain the signup bonus and plus get a single hit on the credit score. Wanted to understand can the BoFa points and Merrill points be merged?
No
Has anyone tried to get this card for a 2nd time? Since you can have multiple Alaska Airlines cards, do you think this one is the same?
Declined in the first place. Called recon # mentioned above yesterday. She told me i have too many inquiries, credit limits given are sufficient while I don’t seem to use them enough.
Asked her if she can reallocate my credit limit from existing Alaska card. It turned out to be that she moved all $6000 credit from alaska (visa signature min. $5000) closed my alaska card and I am ready for the new card!! yay!!
Thank a lot for the recon #!! Some numbers found on the internet did not work at all…
I would like to apply for the Merrill+ and another Alaska so that they can be combined into one HP. Any recent data points on the success of getting a second AS card while having the first opened or should I close the AS then wait X days to apply for both?
Thanks for the earlier post highlighting this card! Like you said, you don’t need an existing relationship with Merrill, since I didn’t and just received my card in the mail today 🙂
How does this compare with Boa travel rewards with plat honors card?
You really just want to focus on the sign up bonus of this card, keeping it long term doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Any idea how long this will last?
None, sorry.
My wife applied and it went to pending. She called recon and they denied her since she already had the max credit that BOA would extend to her. She has four BOA cards in the last 12 months.
She called recon again to ask if they would decrease her other lines of credit in order to approve this one. They said they cannot do it at this time. (weird) She then asked if she could just close a card. The rep said she could close a card, then would have to re-apply the next day and should be approved.
After closing a card, called recon again the next day to ask if they now approve the original application. After seeing that she had closed another card, he automatically approved her for a 5K line of credit on this one. Such a strange process. I’m glad she called before applying a second time!
If points were redeemed for $500 cash into a boa checking or savings would you get the 10 to 75% bonus?