Bucks Blog over at the NY Times is reporting that B of A has a new card that pays you cash back for on-time payment. This, of course, should peak the interest of any credit card deadbeat who never carries a balance. From the B of A website:
Bank of America today introduced the BankAmericard® Better Balance Rewards™ card – a new credit card that rewards customers with up to $100 annually for responsibly managing their monthly credit card payments.
Key features of the Better Balance Rewards card include:
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$25 quarterly cash rewards when payments are made on time and for more than the minimum amount due.
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Additional $5 bonus per quarter for having another qualifying Bank of America account, such as a checking or savings account.
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Customers can choose to have their cash rewards automatically credited to their card balance or deposited into a Bank of America checking or savings account or Merrill Lynch Cash Management Account.
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No annual fee.
For a hustler like me, I’m trying to figure out why I would not get this card, set it to auto-pay, and then go buy a cup of coffee on it each month. The terms and conditions only require you have some sort of balance during every cycle. It seems like this would an easy card to game. Am I missing anything here?
UPDATE: Yes, I did miss something. An astute reader noted that the amount spent per month must exceed the minimum payment due. I just called BofA and the minimum payment due is the larger of $15 or 1%. Thus, you would need to spend $15.01/mth for 3 mths translating to $45.03/qtr. to get the $25. The easiest way to accomplish this limited spending is probably at the gas pump. Assuming you can time the pump, you could get it to $15.01 pretty easily although it could extend your time at the pump. I currently get 5% cash back for gas so this creates a $2.25 opportunity cost for me per quarter. Thus, I could be earning an additional $22.75 over my current spending habits on a quarterly basis.