Update 4/29/20: They have added 5% on grocery, and streaming services for April, May & June. This in addition to 5% on gas. This means you’ll earn 7% on grocery and 6% on streaming. Hat tip to reader Scott F & Ari
Update 4/15/20: Readers are now being shown a $3,500 cap on bookstore purchases per month. It doesn’t show on the landing page at all, but under ‘Credit Card Rewards tab’ when logged in. This seems misleading to not display or mention this cap on the landing page. Hat tip to readers TinkoDinko & PG
Update 1/20/20: Card now has 5% rotating categories:
- January – March: Restaurants
- April – June: Gas
- July – September: Clothing & Home Furnishing
- October – December: Bookstores/discount retailers
This is in addition to the points you’d normally earn
Hat tip to reader David
Update 8/8/19: Card no longer has an annual fee of $95.
Update 3/6/19: This card also earns 5% back on restaurants for the month of March.
Affinity Federal Credit Union offers the ‘Affinity Cash Rewards Visa® Signature Credit Card‘. Let’s take a look at this card in more details
Contents
Card Basics
- $200 cash back after $3,000 in spend within the first 90 days
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 5% cash back at all bookstores including Amazon
- 2% cash back at restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets
- 1% cash back on all other purchases
Our Verdict
There are lots of cards that earn at a high rate on Amazon purchases. There aren’t really any that earn 5% back at all bookstores anymore. It also looks like you need to be a member to apply, anybody can become a member by donating $5.
Hat tip to reader batsy71
This quarter (October-December, 2021) offers 5% cash back on Amazon, Discount stores and Supermarkets.
Does this mean you’ll get a total of 10% cash back on Amazon purchases since the card already provides 5% cash back at Amazon?
Also how about 7% total cash back at Supermarkets?
yes. this 5% is in addition to the categories already earn. so 10% at Amazon and 7% at supermarket up to a total of $3500 spend total for the quarter. the credit for this extra 5% will be issued towards the end if January/early February while the category earn (so first 5% at Amazon and 2% at supermarket) is awarded at end of credit card statement
Is amazon market place(3rd party selling) eligible for 5% cashback? Any?
Looks like they are keeping the 5% rotating categories for another year at least (maybe a permanent feature?):
https://cloud.connect.affinityfcu.com/hi5
Extended warranty benefit removed 🙁
A notice on the bottom of the September CC statement
“Effective February 1, 2021, your Affinity Cash Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card will no longer provide Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver and Warranty Manager Service. All other card benefits will remain in place. To download descriptions of your card benefits, please visit AffinityFCU.com.”
Also being removed from a bunch of Synchrony Cards at the same time.
Worth noting that while the Extended Warranty is gone, the 90 days of Purchase Protection up to $1k remains.
Since Prime video rentals and AWS don’t code for 5%, does anyone have a DP whether Prime subscription renewal codes for 5%?
Does anyone have a list of stores or category codes that are included in each current and upcoming rotating 5% category? Where can I find this information? Thanks
The quarterly 5% bonus doesn’t work for me. For the quarter April to Jun , even they announced a 5% promotional offer for grocery stores. I’ve never get the extra 5% bonus till now. Only 2% as normal. After contacting customer service several times, they tell me gc purchase don’t count. In fact, I do doubt they can get the Level 3 data. But even deduct for the gc, there are still near $900 normal spending on grocery. I think they don’t plan to honor it.
Looks like you messed up badly when you bought gift cards. Were the gift cards stand-alone purchases, or were they part of larger purchases that included real groceries?
IMO it’s pretty hard to reconcile the statement to make sure the correct amount is applied for bonus quarterly rewards, but it does seem correct.
The Q2 bonus for utilities, gas, and grocery posted on 7/30 and 7/31 for me. Two separate entries: “grocery” bonus and “spend” bonus (spend being the combined total of gas and utilities, for some reason).
The CC statement itself does not show rewards; you have to go into online banking to a separate tab to view your rewards “account”. Though the rewards account lets you see how each transaction was categorized ( Books/stationary, supermarket, or “cash” if the transaction was only eligible for the base 1%), I can’t view these details for anything over 30 days old despite the dropdown menu allowing viewing up to the past 90 days.
Rewards seem to be calculated generously though. I had a $300 utility payment made on 6/30 that didn’t post until 7/1, but I still got the 5% bonus on that despite the transaction being on July’s statement.
Walmart did count as grocery for the transactions I made at WM Super Center locations. Prime Video rental does not count as Amazon so no 5% on that.
Hope these DPs help.
And AWS does not code as Amazon 🙁
Got the 5% dated yesterday!
So, does anyone have any updates on the 5% being credited?
Rewards team is a different company who handles these points. I spoke to the rewards team. I was asking why the bonus points was not credited. They mentioned first time, everything looked good. But I did spoke to them about 5% extra CB on groceries and warehouses. They don’t want to really honor the bonus points as per my understanding.
As I recall, the bonus points are awarded at the end of the month following the time period.
So for Q1 (Jan to March), it was awarded last day of April/next statement after.
So for example, for the current 5% (June to Sept) the TOS states “Standard points will be credited normally (the day following the purchase); all bonus points will be credited by October 31, 2020. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions may apply.” at the bottom of the page. See https://www.affinityfcu.com/special-offers/hi-5.aspx
Could you please also share your experience getting the $200 sign up bonus after 3k spend?
Mine was met by middle of June and so far no sign-up bonus payment either (just wondering if I should call in or wait patiently)…
as i recall, the signup bonus was like 30 days or the statement after. Their rewards system is down it seems, as I can’t seem to go back. just wait it out.