U.S. Bank has sent out an e-mail to Cash+ cardholders letting them know about some changes to redeeming rewards. These changes will go into effect on February 15, 2021.
- Real time rewards. This has been available on other cards for some time, but after you make a purchase of $10 you receive a test message and you can reply to this with ‘REDEEM’ and it’ll use your points against this purchase.
- Paypal pay with rewards. You’ll be able to use rewards to pay via PayPal
- Rewards will expire 3 years after earning them.
- Automatic monthly cash rewards redemptions are ending.
- No bonus $25 when redeeming $100 in cash rewards.
As far as I know you can only do the $25 bonus once now anyway, so not a huge loss for those who have already done it. The real time rewards and paypal changes are nice as you no longer need $20 in rewards to redeem but only $10. Other cards offer a bonus when using real time rewards on certain purchases (e.g travel), doesn’t look like that’s the case for Cash+ but we might see a bonus for first time use in the future (my speculation).
Hat tip to Travel With Grant
View Comments (32)
If you make a purchase for $5 (which is below the RTR threshold), then a month later you make a purchase for $15 (which is above the RTR threshold), are you able to redeem the rewards from all $20 at once? If not then you'll have the rewards from all these <$10 purchases building up forever until you get to the $25 minimum redemption, which starts on June 1, 2021 even for statement credit.
does it matter how we redeem the $100? like does it have to be statement credit or gift card? coz I see it says i'd get a $25 gc if I redeem at least $100 when I go to Rewards. i opened this card about 18 months ago or so
wasnt sure if i would get $25 gc for doing statement credit, so i chose the $100 gc option.
"Confirmation: Step 4 of 4
Thank you. You’ve successfully completed your rewards redemption request for $100 and submitted it for processing.
A U.S. Bank Rewards Card will be sent to you within 7-10 business days.
Congratulations! Your reward redemption qualified you for a Cash+ Bonus. You should receive your $25 prepaid U.S. Bank Rewards Card in about six weeks."
I opened my card about 16 months ago but I don’t see that $25 reward mentioned anywhere.
This is such an underrated card. I'm getting 5% back on all my utilities (none of which charges extra for CC payments, except one, and it's a small enough fee to still be worthwhile).
+1 Agree. Prepay my utilities usually in $500 or $1k increments. When the balance is near $0, prepay again. Easy 5% cashback.
Exactly same here. For the one, gas/elec that charges $3 for CC, I pay a lump between say $500 and $1,000. The others are autopay, as is CC itself.
Another advantage is that this is one category of spend where I don't have to think about it. It's all set up.
Check to see if Arcadia is available in your area. They are essentially a middle man between you and the utility company for gas/electric. No CC fees there. Plus you can pretend it makes a difference with renewable energy.
Apparently there have been multiple downgrades to that Arcadia thing, so it's essentially nerfed. (I never did it, was looking/considering, but it got nerfed.)
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/arcadia-power-pay-your-electric-bill-with-credit-card-for-no-fee-available-nationwide/
Not really sure what the point of real-time rewards is because rewards already post monthly and there is no minimum redemption for statement credit. Seems like just marketing.
When you use RTR, do you get cashback on full purchase price?
yes, you get the full points for the purchase and it shows up as if you made a payment on the account
It's great! Double-dipping on points! (ie, earn and redeem at the same time)
This is clearly not a serious comment. There is no double-dipping whatsoever.
I wouldn’t really call it double dipping. It’s no different than earning points on a $100 purchase, then redeeming the old-fashioned way, applying $100 worth of rewards to your statement balance.
In the end, they both result in earnings a couple bucks in rewards and a $0 balance.
totally forgot about the $25 rewards with $100 redemption. Definitely lost many $25s !!!
Same here. US Bank never mentioned the $25 bonus with $100 redemption, not sure if this feature is on my 2 x US Bank Cash+ cards.
As mentioned in the post, you only get the bonus once so if you already got it at one point you haven't been missing out. I can confirm getting it the first time, but future redemptions of >$100 did not give out any bonus.
From my early 2019 screenshots, it wasn't offered then, but maybe there's some small amount of people who got the card even earlier, who had this offer, but who never used the $100+$25, so it's not totally redundant to explicitly end it. But for almost everyone it's moot.
It's been a while since I received that bonus, and I remember that some time back they made it once per lifetime (2015) and then ended the bonus and people had until a certain date to make $100 redemptions and still get the bonus. That end date was definitely well before 2019 (2017?).
That timeline sounds about right, which makes it weird that they would even mention it at all.
The $25 bonus wasn't part of the SUB. It was just a weird extra redemption bonus separate from SUB. It started out as every $100, then changed to once per account, and now they are getting rid of it.
If you haven't done it yet it looks like you have another month to sneak it in. IIRC a note for it just shows up on the CB redemption page if you haven't already redeemed it. If you don't see the note when you redeem your CB then you probably already did it. It's been years since I did mine though so it might look different now.
I'd like to hear if this was really a possibility that I have been missing out on, to know how much I should be kicking myself, if at all.
With U.S. Bank Cash+ you can get statement credits (no min), so RTR seems redundant. (Also does RTR lose you the CB on that purchase?)
Re: "No bonus $25 when redeeming $100 in cash rewards." I got the card last year, and I'm pretty sure "$25 when redeeming $100" was never an option, not even once, unless I missed something, that was already long gone.
@guest_1128572 They are adding a $25 minimum redemption for statement credit starting June 1, 2021, so RTR will become more important.
Yes no longer offered
When did they stop offering the $25 bonus? I got my card in 2019 and I don’t see this bonus.
Someone said (guessed? approx) 2017.
@guest_1128572 I see. Thank you!
I got this card in July, I never had the $25 option.
I think it's just psychological. Some people like feeling like they are erasing a specific purchase even if there is no practical difference.
yes redundant, but no RTR doesn't lose you the cash back