ThunderFat      2026-04-06     2026-04-06

2026.4 Update: Besides the $250 offer provided by BoA itself, third party website Rakuten offers an additional $250 cashback.Note that if you choose to earn MR on Rakuten you may see $0 additional cashback, you need to choose to earn cashback on Rakuten.HT: DoC.

2018.7 Update: The new offer is $250, and this is the best offer ever on this card!

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Benefits

1. $250 offer: earn 25,000 points after spending $1,000 in first 3 months.The value of these points is $250.
2. Earn 1.5x points per $1 spent on all purchases.
3. How to redeem the points: you can redeem the points for statement credit to cover travel expenses at a fixed ratio 1 cent/point.

   You can also redeem the points for cash or gift cards, but the ratio is very low.

4. BoA Preferred Rewards program: If you have checking/savings/brokerage account in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn additional points based on the amount of asset.Earn additional 25% rewards if you are in Gold tier ($20k or more in balance); 50% if Platinum tier ($50k or more in balance); 75% if Platinum Honors tier ($100k or more in balance).
5. No foreign transaction fee.
6. No annual fee.

Recommended Application Time

1. You can get it even without SSN and with no credit history at all! We recommend you go to the branch in this situation.
2. [New] 2/3/4 Rule: BoA will only approve you for at most: 2 cards per rolling 2 months; 3 cards per rolling 12 months; and 4 cards per rolling 24 months.Because their IT system hasn’t been fully updated yet, you may not get declined because of this rule.Instead, you may get approved at first, and then the account will be closed because of “approved in error”.
3. [New] 24 month churn rule: This card will not be available to you if you currently have or have had the card in the preceding 24 month period.

Summary

The sign-up bonus is quite good for a no annual fee card.

It has no Foreign Transaction Fee (FTF) and no annual fee, so it is useful to those who need to make foreign purchases but do not want to pay annual fee.Besides, if you have $100k+ balance in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn 1.5%*(1+75%)=2.625% in return! This return is the highest among all credit cards for non-bonus category, and suitable for those who really spend a lot.The money in BoA or Merrill Edge is not required to be in form of cash, you can buy some MMF (Money Market Funds) which has very little risk (such as VMMXX), so there really isn’t much opportunity cost if you have such money.If you don’t have this amount of money in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can also consider PayPal Cashback Mastercard, which earns 2% cashback on everything, with no annual fee and no FTF (no sign-up bonus though).

Related Credit Cards

After Applying

Historical Offers Chart

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