Update January 7th, 2018: This card is now no longer accepting new applications. All pages on USAA now error out apart from the terms page. It’s unclear what will happen to existing customers.
Original post November 17th, 2017: USAA offers the Limtless Cashback Rewards card that offers 2.5% cash back on all purchases when you have a monthly qualifying direct deposit of $1,000 in an USAA Bank checking account. The card has been in an online pilot since it was launched and only available in limited states. They were slowly adding more states until October 30th, 2017 when they removed some previously eligible states. They have now removed even more states and it’s only currently available in Louisiana. It seems like the rumors of it going nationwide have been squashed unless they are rolling back before a nationwide launch (and to me that doesn’t make much sense).
Some people have been warned about manufactured spending, so it’s possible they are trying to get a handle on that currently. Hopefully anybody that in a previously eligible state that wanted to sign up has already done so. You can read our full review of the card here. You can read our full review of this card here.
Hat tip to reader Connor
Just got the new Preferred cards sent to me automatically from USAA since my Limitless cards are expiring next month…no mention of “Limitless” or “2.5%” or “additional 1%”. It looks like it’s just a 1.5% card.
They will convert the card to the 1.5% this year and honor 2.5% through 12/31/2022.
They are killing the Limitless card. got this letter today
Effective April 26, 2022, your USAA Limitless Cashback Rewards Credit Card ending in XXXX will automatically be converted to the Preferred Cash Rewards Visa Credit Card.
What’s Changing?
Your new Preferred Cash Rewards Visa Credit Card will earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every Qualifying
Purchase. We recognize that this product change reduces the amount of cash back you will earn on purchases.
To show our appreciation for your loyalty, you will automatically earn an additional 1% cash back, totaling 2.5%,
on Qualifying Purchases through December 31, 2022. Additionally, tax payments will no longer be eligible for
cash back
Same:
Your new Preferred Cash Rewards Visa Credit Card will earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every Qualifying Purchase1. We recognize that this product change reduces the amount of cash back you will earn on purchases. To show our appreciation for your loyalty, you will automatically earn an additional 1% cash back, totaling 2.5%, on Qualifying Purchases through December 31, 2022. Additionally, tax payments will no longer be eligible for cash back.
Ditto. Terrible. It was good while it lasted, but I sort of suspected that this day would eventually come.
BOOOOOOOO
Same letter…. I think it is more than fair of them to give us basically until the end of the year to keep 2.5% cashback…that’s over 8 months notice and I doubt other issuers would give that much heads up. Still sad to see it end though. At 1.5%, there are better options. This card will be canceled or go in the sock drawer after 12/31/2022
ussa is a shell of what it used to be when I was first a member. I went through tons of BS with these guys to get this card going. did the 1000 per month direct deposit and then they said it had to be a minimum of 1000 dollars not two 500 dollar deposits. After it was all said and done. I told them to shove their card. They rectified my account and sent me a check for .01 cent. How’s that for money well spent USAA members.
USAA had always labeled this as pilot. There’s a possibility that this was intentional on their part to open to a certain number of users across certain geographical regions and once they’ve reached their quota, they close applications. If this is the case, they’ll probably analyze spending behaviors and see if it’s worth a national expansion. If not, discontinue the pilot program.
Very good point!
Also, if they keep 2.5% for existing customers, remember that tax payments don’t qualify for 2.5% cashback. https://communities.usaa.com/t5/Banking/Beware-of-quot-Limitless-quot-Visa-Card-Not-everything-give-2-5/td-p/148687
They may be swapping out to a 1.5% offering. I got an offer for an “unlimited” card the other day. As opposed to “limitless” I’ll see if I can find the email, it’s been a hellish week here, so I didn’t really pay attention to whether it was a new offering or not
Suspecting that is the preferred cash rewards card that has been available for a long time
That card has been around for awhile… It is not a replacement. I got the same Targeted offer via snail mail: “USAA Preferred Cash Rewards Visa Signature” CC earns an unlimited 1.5%… Offering $100 reward bonus when you make 12 purchases by April 30th.
Love this card, crossing my fingers that those who have it are grandfathered in for the current benefits.
Have had the car for a while now, got $400 credit through regular spend, im not gonna risk M$ on this car when grocery stores offer 3% anywho
Figures… My saga (sorry for the length): I live in Kansas, which was one of the first states they had in the pilot. But I’m also not a full member because I have no military affiliation (or family relationship). I’ve done my banking with them from way back when they allowed everyone to do that. I kept trying to apply but it would never allow me to even complete an application. A few others who were only partial members like me reported this same experience. During the first week of November this year I tried again, and to my happy surprise it let me complete the application. I was super-pumped as I completed the application, knowing that according to USAA’s own site my Experian score was 830 (which is around what it is at the other two bureaus according to CK). Needless to say the smile was wiped off my face when it came up declined due to the “Maximum Credit Limit” reasoning. I have long had an AMEX with them, which I rarely use. It has a $13,000 limit. Having been spoiled by Chase, I figured “oh I’ll just call in and reduce my credit line on the AMEX and have them reconsider”. Silly me. After the rep reduced my AMEX CL down to $1000, he called underwriting and they basically told him to tell me to pound sand. Not only would they not reconsider my request, they couldn’t say that reducing the CL on the AMEX would make any difference if I were to re-apply. I asked the original rep if I could re-apply over the phone and he said that for the Limitless, it’s an online-only app. But he said I could re-apply online. I hang up and figured I would go ahead and re-apply since the hard pulls would likely be combined. Got to the application page and can’t remember the exact error but it basically said I’d already reached my application limit for that card…. lol So I get the official denial letter in the mail this week and it confirms they pulled Experian but says my score is 773?! To my knowledge I haven’t had a score under 800 in 10+ years. I have zero history of late payments, low debt (100K mortgage and an 8K auto loan) and carry no revolving balances. As soon as I saw that I was horrified thinking about the Experian hack but I pulled my report and there’s nothing out-of-the-ordinary on it. Has anyone seen such a large discrepancy between the “score” that sites like USAA provide and the official score from the same bureau? I’d think maybe a 10-20 or even 30 point difference could be expected. But a 52-point difference? Anyway, I have no idea what the real reason I was rejected was. Maybe by the time I applied USAA was really restricting apps for this card, or maybe there was an error somewhere or maybe it’s still because I’m not a fully-privileged member. But all… Read more »
Score discrepancies like that are common, even though USAA provides a free score that’s not always the same credit scoring model they actually use for underwriting.
Makes you wonder then what the point is of providing scores to customers if they vary that much from the scores actually used to judge your creditworthiness. Especially since both scores have the same range.
I mean a score of 830 is close enough to 850 that a customer would think “I’m already at the top scale of creditworthiness” Whereas a customer with a 770 would (or should) think “I’ve got work to do to bring this score up”. Every “free” score I’ve gotten in the last ten years has been above 800, so it was pretty shocking to see a score that low.
But I guess this is getting off-topic for this post. Just ticks me off.
Yup, it’s very annoying. Keep in mind credit scores are only one part of the approval process.
They provide a score for your informational purposes.
Lenders switch up which one they used based on things like what state you are applying from.
BTW it makes no difference if your score is 850 or 770, both are high enough to be a “prime” borrower. As long as it’s over 750 you don’t have to worry.
I’ve been stoozing and recently my real score was 70+ points ABOVE the score from a few of the calculators.
Needless to say I’ve stopping using them to influence my application cycles.
For people that want to deep dive into the calculators: multiple low-ish (3k-15k) limit credit cards maxed out (yet still a small portion of total credit limit: ~15% depending on month) appears to have dropped my calculator score by much more than the real score.
There’s no one “credit score,” there’s a thousand different algorithms. There’s not even one “FICO credit score,” FICO itself has a bunch, FICO 8 and FICO 9 are most well used but mortgages use a different FICO (FICO 4 I think)
Granted this is a topic for another thread, but I had a similar experience with an auto loan with USAA. They said both my wife and I had scores 60 points lower than what we saw from other sources. When I mentioned this to the rep after calling to inquire, I was told USAA uses Experian. I said, “Yes, like you utilize with our credit cards to provide our scores?” They kept the interest rate at the higher level, even after keeping me on hold for 30 minutes to discuss my concerns with underwriting.
I understand the numbers and algorithms may be different from one model to the next. However, this was USAA providing our numbers — and their score with our credit cards were very close to the scores we viewed with the other credit monitoring services we utilize.
Long story short, they charged us double their advertised interest rate for a new car loan. I complained numerous times to no avail — until I finally started posting online about their unethical business practice. This was a complete bait-and-switch. (I will add that we are retired military, as well, although we both still work. We are supposedly to whom USAA is “dedicated to serve”.) This resulted in calls from the Office of the CIO, who did not want to resolve the issue; they merely wanted to listen to the complaint and ask if I would reconsider the statements I posted.
I considered it nearly as long as USAA thought about refunding the difference in interest charged on the auto loan.