Earlier this year U.S. Bank made huge changes to the Smartly credit card, but the changes only applied to new applicants and existing cardholders were grand fathered in. Existing cardholders have now received a notice that this is changing, starting on 9/15/25:
- “earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase with no caps”
- “earn up to an additional 2% cash back [the “Smartly Earning Bonus”] on your first $10,000 in eligible Net Purchases each billing cycle when paired with a U.S. Bank Smartly Savings account and average daily combined qualifying balances in U.S. Bank deposit, trust or investment accounts” with $100K+ in qualifying balance required for a total of 4% cash back
- exclude* certain categories of purchases “from earning the Smartly Earning Bonus”: (1) “Education/school, gift cards, insurance, or tax”; (2) “Business-to-business transactions (i.e., advertising services, construction material suppliers, etc.)”; and (3) “Transactions using third-party bill payment services.” “These purchases will earn the base 2% cash back and are not calculated as part of the $10,000 billing cycle cap.”
Surprised they didn’t make these changes earlier in the year to be honest, this card was never sustainable.
So investment accounts still count? Still a solid card vs the v2 where they need to be in checking.
There are reports on the Bogleheads thread below of people receiving letters with different terms which don’t include investments as qualifying accounts. One person posted a picture of the letter which only included checking account balances.
Apparently some v1 user got the v2 treatment
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8457490#p8457490
Worst CC launch ever, and an unfortunate use of a 5/24 slot. It would be “fairer” that if you close a card within 24 months, it doesn’t count against your 5/24 status.
Correct me if I am wrong, if you buy the gift cards via Amazon or from the gift cards rack at stores that have gift cards rack, US bank would not know you bought a gift card since they would just see a purchase at Amazon and/or at a retail store? So then the 4% cash back rate would apply.
Should be fine. Most likely they will just exclude transactions with the MCC ‘POI Funding Transactions’ like giftcards.com, giftcards.kroger.com, PayPal Digital Gifts, etc.
Does anyone know what is included in “insurance”? Is it literally the entire category (e.g. medical, auto, homeowners/renters, umbrella, etc.) or only certain types of insurance?
This is the most common MCC used for general insurance premium payments (life, auto, home, etc.)
The amount of money that’s gonna be pulled out of them is gonna be extraordinary
Chasing away customers who have high net worth and excellent credit is definitely an interesting choice.
Do you know if there is any change on waiving self directed brokerage fee if the investment account balance exceeds 100k?
U.S. Bank is very lame. I have the Cash+ card and it is great, but they weakened it early on. I hated them for a bank and savings account. This was inevitable.
It’s the overall trend and breaking of trust that makes maintaining $100k+ in an investment account and a savings/checking account there not worth it. With the new categories there is a max of about $20k a year that I couldn’t fit onto a 5%+ card (online shopping, Costco, Sam’s, groceries, gas, utilities, travel are all 5%+). Compared to BofA’s 2.625% USB’s 4% is only 1.375% more which on $20k is only $275 a year. I could get more than that just by churning USB’s $450/year checking account SUB. Plus I trust BofA’s ecosystem. They’ve maintained it for years without any nerfing. And Merrill Edge isn’t great, but it’s 1000x better than USB’s platform.
Not to mention that the Premium Rewards/PR Elite cards actually has Visa benefits (e.g. Extended Warranty/Purchase Protection/Return Protection) unlike the Smartly card which has none.
I thought they would nerf this for the grandfathered people at the one-year anniversary. I guess they figured they didn’t have to wait that long. The further question is whether they’ll eventually nerf it even more later on, such as not allowing paying rent to qualify, as one example. Or perhaps lower the cash back rate below 4%. Of course, if they nerf it further, they can expect a lot more people to pull their 4-figures of money out.
4 figures? 🙂
Ha. I meant 6-figures of money. I better stop the early-morning cocktails. 😀