Positives Changes Coming To The Chevron/Texaco Credit Card Starting July 1st

The Chevron/Texaco credit card is issued by Synchrony (who now also issue the BP credit card), starting July 1st they are making a positive change to the rewards structure of the card.

Which means the rewards structure on this card will now be as follows:

• 3¢/gal in fuel credits every time you fill up at Chevron and Texaco stations
• Plus earn additional fuel credits when you spend a set amount outside of fuel merchants each month:
  • 10¢/gal when you spend $300 or more
  • 20¢/gal when you spend $1,000 or more

This card has always earned the 10¢ and 20¢ per gallon credits, but the new 3¢ per gallon is new starting July 1st. This stacks with the other discounts, meaning you can now earn 23¢ per gallon in fuel credits. In addition to this change, fuel credits are now applied as statement credit at the end of each billing cycle, rather than counting towards future fuel purchases.

There is a earnings cap on this card, you can earn a maximum of $300 in fuel credits per calendar year. Let’s see if using this card makes any sense, to get the maximum discount we’d need to put $1,000 in spend on this card. We wouldn’t earn any rewards for that spend, but we would earn at least $20 if we put it on a 2% cash back card. If you do that for twelve months you’re already at $240, which is closed to the earnings cap on this card and that’s before considering even purchasing any fuel.

But if you spent a lot on gas you could try and hit that earning cap within a month or two which would lower your opportunity cost. Lowest prices for gas seems to be around $2.5, with the average being $2.8 nationwide. This means that you could possibly get a discount of around 10% (before taking into consideration the $1,000 spend required).

Personally I think most people will be better off with a 5% cash back card, as if you’re spending enough on gas to max out the $300 rewards cap in a few months then you’re probably going to need one of those cards long term anyway. That being said, it’s always nice when a card has it’s earning rates increased rather than decreased.

Hat tip to TortoiseWins on myFICO