U.S Bank offers two Flexperks credit cards: Visa & American Express (in reality there are really five cards, there is also a business card and select version of the Visa & American Express). The cards both have the same sign up bonus of 20,000 Flexpoints after $3,500 in purchases within the first four months of account opening. The cards do have slightly different categories that earn at an increase rate:
| Visa | American Express | |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurants & fast food | 1x points | 2x points |
| Charity | 3x points | 3x points |
| Gas/Grocery/Airfare* | 2x points | 2x points |
| Cell | 2x points | 2x points |
* You’ll earn 2x points on whichever category you spend the most on that monthly billing cycle, the other categories will earn 1x points
On the surface this makes it seem like the American Express is the better option as it also earns 2x at Restaurants & Fast Food (and restaurants are becoming notoriously difficult to get a category bonus in). Unfortunately the American Express card codes Kiva as miscellaneous and specialty retail store rather than charity and because of this you won’t earn 3x points on these purchases/donations. This is somewhat important as it’s relatively easy to manufacture spend with Kiva (although there are some risks and ethics involved).
I still think both cards are worth picking up at some stage, Flexpoints are worth up to 2¢ for airfare and up to 1.5¢ for hotels. Thanks to reader Scott for making me aware of this issue.
