U.S. Bank has launched a new credit card soon called the U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card. The card earns 2% cashback everywhere, which isn’t particularly exciting seeing as there are many cards on the market with that earning rate.
What does make it far more eye-catching is the fact that it’s possible to boost the total earnings up to 4% cashback.
Card Details
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
None ⓘ Non-Affiliate Currently no welcome offerNo Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: On its own, an OK cashback card with no annual fee, but becomes much more powerful if you have deposits with US Bank. Base: 2X (2%) Card Info: Visa Signature issued by USB. This card imposes foreign transaction fees. Noteworthy perks: Earn better cashback rates when you hold a balnce in an eligible US Bank account: $5,000-$49,999 = 2.5% total cashback; $50,000-$99,999 = 3% bonus cashback; 100,000+ = 4% cashback |
Visa Signature® Card
Quick Thoughts
The Smartly card earns 2% standard cashback. You can then boost that rate if you have a U.S. Bank Smartly Savings account and have the following amounts deposited:
- 0.5% bonus cashback (i.e. 2.5% total cashback) – Qualifying balance of $5,000-$49,999
- 1% bonus cashback (i.e. 3% total cashback) – Qualifying balance of $50,000-$99,999
- 2% bonus cashback (i.e. 4% total cashback) – Qualifying balance of $100,000+
As you can see, you’ll have to deposit $100K with U.S. Bank in order to earn that 4% cashback rate. That’s a steep ask for many people, but you don’t have to hold that amount in cash in a Smartly Savings account. Instead, you can have $25 in that savings account and the remainder in any mix of the following types of account:
- Consumer checking account(s)
- Money market savings account(s)
- Savings account(s)
- CDs and/or IRAs
- U.S. Bancorp Investments
- Personal trust account(s)
That’s useful because the Smartly Savings account is currently only offering 4.1% APY. Although that’s a solid rate, there are many savings accounts out there offering at least 5.1% APY.
$100,000 in total deposits matches the amount needed to earn Platinum Honors with Bank of America. Platinum Honors provides the opportunity to earn up to 5.25% cashback depending on which cards you have, so if you only have $100,000 to deposit then it might make more sense to go the Bank of America route.
However, if you have at least $200,000 in eligible savings, depositing $100,000 with both U.S. Bank and Bank of America could be worth doing if you’re able to generate a lot of spend on your credit cards and don’t want to cycle spending on your Bank of America card(s). What’s worth remembering though is that Bank of America cards only earn up to 5.25% cashback in certain categories, whereas this Smartly credit card will offer 4% cashback on all purchases.
The cashback will be redeemable at full value when redeemed as a deposit into an eligible U.S. Bank deposit account. If you want to redeem the cashback (earned as points) as a statement credit on your credit card or through other redemption options like gift cards, you might not get that full value.
If you end up applying for this card, something important to be aware of is that if you don’t earn or redeem the points on your account for 12 consecutive statement cycles you’ll lose your entire points balance. While some card issuers might close accounts due to inactivity after a year, I can’t think of any off hand that will forfeit all your points/cashback earnings too.
That’s a disappointing policy and one that’ll mean you won’t want to accidentally sock drawer this card. If you’re earning 4% cashback then that might not be an issue as you’d likely be putting at least some spend on it, but it’s a policy that’s worth being aware of.
When U.S. Bank launched the Altitude Reserve card back in 2017, they were initially very sensitive to people buying gift cards using their mobile wallet to earn 3x points per dollar. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re quite as sensitive to people racking up 4% cashback on this new Smartly credit card.
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