Deal has expired, view more NFCU deals by clicking here.
The Offer
Direct link to offer (might be targeted as it says non transferable. E-mails with the subject line ‘Bonus Points on Big-Ticket Purchases’)
- Navy Federal Credit Union (NFCU) is offering cashRewards customers an extra 5% cash back on purchases of $500 or more. This is in addition to the 1.5% cash back you’d normally receive.
- Other people have a crappy offer for 0% APR for six months instead
The Fine Print
- Only individual purchases made with your Navy Federal cashRewards credit card between 11/1/18 and 12/31/18 that meet the minimum spend requirement of $500 will be eligible for the 5% cash back bonus.
- Purchases cannot be combined to reach the minimum.
- However, multiple individual purchases within a single transaction that meet the spending minimum will qualify.
- Rewards are based on net purchases. “Net purchases” means the sum of your eligible purchase transactions minus returns and refunds.
- Eligible purchase transactions do not include, and rewards are not earned for, the following transactions: cash advances, convenience checks, balance transfers, or fees of any kind, including finance charges, late fees, returned check fees, ATM cash advance fees, and annual fees, if any.
- Cash equivalent transactions, such as the purchase, loading, or reloading of gift and prepaid cards (e.g., money orders, Visa® Buxx Cards, GO Prepaid Cards and other cash equivalent gift cards), may not be eligible purchase transactions and may not earn rewards.
- Note on orders placed for later delivery, including online shopping: Merchants will often break a transaction up based on shipping date and method, and charge the cards based on shipment, not the original order.
- This means that an order that may appear to qualify for the special offer may be broken into smaller charges that no longer qualify.
- We can only base this offer on the charges as the merchant sends them to us, not as they may have been originally made.
- Offer is not transferable.
- Excludes Navy Federal Business cards.
Our Verdict
This promotion is just stupidly good. I kept on expecting there to be some sort of catch (e.g maximum allowed) but there doesn’t seem to be any. 6.5% cash back on all purchases of $500+ is crazy good. Keep in mind the fine print excludes gift cards/prepaids etc, I’m thinking they are going to enforce that somehow otherwise it’s going to be mayhem.
Hat tip to reader Mike G & Jimmie C
just an dp on 5% bonuses. everyone of my large purchases have received the 5% bonus. the one odd dp is that what they may consider cash equivalent transactions got the 5% bonus but not the 1.5% regular cb. 2 examples i reloadable my debit card (not navy fed debit card) twice and also opened a gte cred union bank account. both got the 5% neither got the 1.5%. paid my rent with the card, got the full 6.5%. statement hasnt closed yet to see full details, but navy fed credits rewards immediatly at posting
got this offer in the mail yesterday, so there is still hope for those holding out
How do they know you are making a gift card purchase?
just got it in snail mail today for both my wife and myself (for the record, not sure if either of us has used the cards in forever).
does anyone know what detail level Visa/Navy Federal get from grocery store purchases? don’t think i want to risk blatantly buying off of like giftcards dot com, but Kroger would do nicely (plus be able to churn those gift cards faster)
any data points for getting bonus for VGC obtained in Grocery or pharmacy?
Does anyone know if Navy Federal considers Plastiq cash equivalent? I’ve got property taxes due at the end of December.
Looks like they only mention “gift cards” so I’m going to go for it.
IDK, havent done any plastiq yet but you may want to do a tiny amount and pay the 2.5% plastiq fee and see if you at least get the 1.5% CB from navy fed. If you do, it should work as the cash equivalent rules are the same for base earning and since they post rewards the same day the charges post you should know quickly
NO LIMIT MENTIONED!!??? Holy crap, this is gonna come in handy when I buy my new boiler (at least $6,000, so almost $400 cash back!?)
EDIT: I remember getting this email but I didn’t really read it. Now I can’t find it again… ???? Guess I’ll have to SM to make sure…
I called CSR and said I heard from a family member who has the cashrewards card she got a notice of extra 5% cash back over holidays on her cashrewards card for large purchases, and I was wondering if this applied to my cashrewards card too as I have Christmas shopping coming up. She said they were just alerted to this promo code today on the floor, and it is targeted and looked up my account and said it was not attached to my cashrewards card. She mentioned it had to do with past spending and one would be targeted for one of three offers if they are targeted (later said she does not know what causes one to be targeted or not – so take the contradictory statements for what they are worth.)
I have done no spending on this card all year (just a zero percent bt earlier in Feb)
Interesting, thanks for the info!
Same here, Cash Rewards card with zero spending this year.
Typically one may encourage holidays spending with such an offer to account-holders with small spendings. Obviously and unfortunately they are not thinking that way.
I got the 5% over $500 offer on the cashrewards card and have spent less than $90 on it all year and $0 in probably 4 years prior to that. I annually do balance transfers though, so perhaps that’s why i am targeted?
Servo, same here. My spending this year has probably been $0 – $20 at the most. I also do annual BTs. I currently have an active 0% ($0 fee) BT that was set to expire on Jan 7 2019, so I paid it off early in order to take advantage of this offer. The balance was only $2K. Did you have an active BT, too?
Does anyone have the cashrewards card but got the 6 month 0% email?
Gah, would have been nice to have received this email earlier instead of yesterday, since it started November 1. Would have definitely used my NFCU card on November 2 to make a $1k purchase at Lowe’s. Oh well, at least I used a 2% card.
I didn’t get either offer and I have the NFCU Cash Rewards 🙁
I guess you didn’t appeal to the targeting algorithm. Too bad you don’t know the ingredients to the special sauce, or the 11 herbs & spices.
My question is… where is this kind of love for the Flagship Rewards?
Yeah I have that card sock drawered since I’ve only really used it for a 0% BT Offer.
More offers likely rolling out soon!