1. First Electronic Bank’s Bank’s Rakuten American Express card has an increased sign-up bonus of $100, or 10,000 Membership Rewards, after $1,000 spend in 90 days. The card earns:

    – Rakuten portal: 4x up to $7,000 spend per year
    – Rakuten restaurants: 5x
    – Groceries and dining: 2x
    – Everywhere else: 1x

    The card definitely isn’t an unsung hero, but it is a card that earns unlimited 2x Membership Rewards at grocery without RAT concerns, and possibly soon unlimited 2x Bilt points at grocery too. It’s also a third party AmEx. Finally, it’s time for your annual reminder that Rakuten used to be called buy.com, but that was too hard to say and spell, or something.
  2. Existing Bank of America Preferred Rewards members have an opportunity for a $1,000 bonus for bringing $250,000+ in retirement or regular brokerage investments into a new Merrill account, even if have an existing Merrill account with promo 1000PR.

    You can ACATS transfer existing investments. Investments only have to be with Merrill for 90 days after transfer.
  3. American Express has newly targeted upgrade offers for:

    Delta Gold to Platinum: 30,000 SkyMiles + $250 statement credit with $3,000 spend
    Delta Platinum to Reserve: 35,000 SkyMiles + $300 statement credit with $4,000 spend

    Both give you six months to hit the spend.
  4. American Express’s Delta Personal Gold card also has a heightened $500 statement credit + 50,000 SkyMiles sign-up bonus after $3,300 spend in six months through October 29. The offer is presented while making a (dummy) booking, and the annual fee is waived for the first year too.

    This one won’t work with the above targeted upgrade offers in the first year though, thanks to CARD act, also known as the fried twinkee of credit card regulations.
  5. Vanilla Gift has fee-free Visa gift cards with promo code VISA100. I’d be surprised if other Incomm sites don’t also have promotions running, but they’re not advertising them in the same ways that they normally do so I can’t tell. Purchase limits are $10,000 per rolling 24 hours per account.

    These are Vanilla / Incomm gift cards. (Thanks to DoC)
  6. Rove lets you now earn regular loyalty points and elite night credits on some hotel bookings in addition to miles earned directly with Rove.

Happy Wednesday!

Rakuten’s next rebrand.

  1. Do this now: Register for your Q4 Marriott targeted Q4 promotions, including:

    – Five bonus elite nights, usable 2x for stays through January 31, 2026
    – Extra elite night for all stays through December 31
    – 15,000 bonus points every five stays, up to 3x through January 31, 2026
    – 2,000 bonus per stay at AC, Courtyard, or Four Points properties through February 16, 2026
    – 2,025 bonus points per stay, up to 3x through January 10, 2026
    – 2,000 bonus points per stay, up to 3x at Outdoors properties through January 10, 2026

    Some of those numbers look big, but remember they’re still Bonvoy points.
  2. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards. (Thanks to GCA)
  3. Staples.com has fee-free virtual $200 Visa gift cards, limit four per account. Sometimes obscure portals work on these too, sometimes.

    These are also Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. American Express has a few new offers, all of which are valid through December 31:

    – Virgin Atlantic: $250 off of $1,800+
    – Hilton Cards (variation 1): Earn 6,000 bonus points for a $3,000+ purchase (up to 3x)
    – Hilton Cards (variation 2): Earn 20,000 bonus points for a $10,000+ purchase (up to 3x)
    – Qatar: $200 off of $850+ through AmEx Travel

    I’m told “gamers gonna (allegedly) game”. (Thanks to Stowe)

Happy Tuesday!

“Allegedly”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Look – yes it’s cryptic, but it’s also actionable. #teamcrypticallyactionable

Let’s start with the captain obvious statement for the day: Certain plays only work at a single place, but other plays work at hundreds or thousands of places. Let’s give two concrete examples:

  • gift card purchases at Food Lion won’t work for Kroger fuel point resellers
  • account bonus funding with a credit card works at many banks and credit unions

As you get deeper into the stack of manufactured spend plays, you’ll often find that many of them fall into the second category, there are plenty of entities where a particular play will work.

Because churners are often working in small groups, everyone in the group will hit the same entity at the same time and drive themselves collectively to a quick shutdown because the group’s volume became too big to ignore. The corollary is that plays are often longer lived when the group spreads out its targets for (hopefully) obvious reasons.

So, today’s wisdom: If you can run a play somewhere different than everyone else, you’re probably going to be a lot better off for it. Don’t follow the herd when you don’t have to.

Happy Monday!

Did you know? Avoid following herds of pickles too because reasons.

  1. Stop & Shop, Giant, Giant Food, and Martins have 2x point earning on Mastercards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per loyalty account (or $1,500 for Giant Food because sibling spite).

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  2. New no-lifetime language (NLL) Hilton card offers are available and they’ve been shared by DDG (note that DDG says that these are hacked links, but at least the Aspire and Honors links are generally available at hotels on Hilton WiFi):

    – Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Surpass: 155,000 points after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Honors: 100,000 points after $2,000 spend in six months

    These are good offers, and they’re great offers for NLL cards, but Hilton’s recent devaluations are significant so make sure you know the award prices for a booking you have in mind rather than blindly signing up for one of these bonuses.
  3. Ether.fi is cluster bombing travel influencers promoting their crypto backed 3% everywhere debit card and crypto account. It’s cool on the surface and by all means please try and work it into your churning portfolio, but you should know:

    – They’ll turn off your cash back earning really quickly if you have a big transaction or two
    – They’re pretty sure “cashback farmers” are constantly attacking their company
    – Their site is rather buggy, and their support doesn’t respond to tickets
    – They advertise debit card features that haven’t been implemented
    – You’re not actually earning cash back, you’re earning SCR which is down 75% for the year

    So, good luck I guess?
  4. Paid flights on Qatar have a 5% discount code and 3,000 bonus miles in most fare buckets (or 10% and 6,000 bonus miles in some expensive fare buckets) using promo code QRPCHILTON for travel booked by October 31 and flown by March 31, 2026.

    Why? Because somehow a Qatar+Hilton partnership gives you bonus earnings on Qatar and exactly nothing with Hilton except their name in a promo code. #marketingfail
  5. Stater Bros stores have $10 off of groceries with $50+ in Visa or Mastercard gift cards through October 21.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gif cards.
  6. Meijer stores have 10,000 bonus MPerks points with $100+ in One4All gift cards through Tuesday, limit 10,000 points per MPerks account.

    Meijer sells both Pathward / BlackHawk Network and Sunrise gift cards.

Have a nice weekend!

A cashback farmer driving to Meijer.

  1. The Citi Strata Elite Card has a public heightened sign-up bonus of 100,000 ThankYou points after $6,000 spend in three months, no weird links or other in-branch shenanigans that may or may not involve eating pudding with a fork are needed.
  2. The AA eShopping portal currently has giftcards.com at 2.5x earning. You may be surprised to learn that giftcards.com sells things like gift cards.

    AA in particular is interesting because you’ll also earn Loyalty Points toward status through the shopping portal.
  3. Discount airlines are running sales:

    – Frontier: Sale on paid and award bookings made today, travel through December 18
    – American Express Offers for Frontier: $50 off of $200+ by December 31
    – Southwest: Sale on paid and award bookings made today, travel 21 days out

    The Frontier deals will be specifically great for churning legend Alan, but have utility outside of Alan too.
  4. Blit Rewards (sp) added Etihad Guest as a 1:1 transfer partner. I’m glad to see new partners, but this one adds about as much incremental value as mayonnaise does to pizza.

Happy Thursday!

Bilt adds Etihad, but as a pizza.

Background

The Wyndham Rewards program when tied with the Barclays Wyndham Business Earner Visa credit card used to be a heavyweight in terms of both earn and burn, but that’s changed due to:

– Continual Vacasa devaluations
– The loss of many Vacasa properties for points bookings
– The dwindling Vacasa footprint
– The loss of Caesar’s Diamond status matches

It doesn’t help that Wyndham points have a hard expiration of four years after earning regardless of account activity, so stuck points will eventually become forfeited points if you’re not careful.

The Way Out

United currently has a 25% bonus for incoming hotel points up to 25,000 total bonus miles, and Wyndham has a 100% transfer bonus for points transfers to United (registration required) through October 31. The regular transfer ratio is 5:1, and when you stack everything, it comes out to:

5 / 2 / 1.25 : 1 = 2 : 1
(or)
30,000 Wyndham → 15,000 United

Those United miles aren’t worth what they used to be, but they don’t expire and you’d probably rather not stay in an old Ramada next to a European airport anyway. Watch out on the Wyndham side though, based on the terms and conditions you may need to do each batch of transfers in a single transaction.

The Tweaks

The Wyndham Business Visa card still earns 8x at gas stations, so you’ve got an opportunity to earn 4x United miles (after conversion) at gas stations if you have the card. But, Wyndham to United transfers take a couple of weeks [UPDATE: Transfers are happening next day currently], so unless your Wyndham Business card statement closes in the next week or so, you may not be able to slide into the narrow window for United’s incoming transfer bonus, which would mean the you’d only get 12,000 miles for 30,000 Wyndham points, or 3.2x at gas stations.

My Action

Just because I’m doing something doesn’t mean you should to, in fact it probably means you shouldn’t. Anyhoodles, I’m sending all of my Wyndham points to United now, and I’m going to try and move my Wyndham statement closing date to next week and send everything new over before the deadline (Indiana Jones sliding under the concrete door style, but without all the leather). (Thanks to C-MontgomeryChurns)

Happy Wednesday!

The way out is easy, just follow the signs.

  1. US Bank has a $1,200 business checking bonus for accounts opened through January 14, 2026 with promo code Q4AFL25. To get the bonus, you need to:

    – Deposit $25,000 within 30 days (ideally on day 29 probably)
    – Hold at least a $25,000 balance for the next 60 days
    – Have five transactions, like $1 ACHs or something

    If you hold the money in the account for exactly 60 days, you’re earning an effective APR of about 28.8%, which isn’t bad in this economy. These accounts are scalable with a bit of creativity, and churnable on a per-business basis 12 months after closing.
  2. Marriott Bonvoy has a 15% transfer bonus to AirCanada Aeroplan through October 31. With the bonus, 60,000 Bonvoy points convert to 28,000 Aeroplan miles.
  3. American Express has a new targeting code for upgrades to Business Platinum cards with 120,000 bonus Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months. Upgrades are available from Business Greens and Business Golds.

    With last week’s link, you’ve got least two muppet games to play.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for a $225 statement credit with $1,500+ at Icelandair through December 31 for US originating flights booked in US dollars (sorry, it’s not always that easy).
  5. AirFrance / KLM’s FlyingBlue program has discounted business class award tickets to Europe from Washington Dulles for 45,000 miles each way between November and February.

    Using calendar view by not choosing a start date and trying various major European cities is a good way to find availability. (Thanks to LL)
  6. Rakuten will apparently be partnering with Bilt to allow you to earn Bilt points instead of cash back or Membership Rewards, though the mention was pulled from the site late last night.

    Hopefully the ratio of Rakuten points to Bilt Rewards will be 1:1, but given Richard Kerr’s involvement I wouldn’t call that a foregone conclusion. Go ahead Richard, prove me wrong.

  7. Tickets booked through Southwest’s vacation site, the annoyingly named Getaways by Southwest, still get two free checked bags. This doesn’t help you with points bookings though. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Tuesday!

Designing bathroom doors isn’t always easy either.

  1. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points earning on all Zift cards through Saturday, digital coupon clip required. On Saturday, the typical 4x coupon may stack to make these 12x instead of 10x too. Some Just4U brands also have a stackable offer for $10 off of $50+ for third party gift cards (no coupon clip required) including Zift.

    Why is this a headliner? Some Zifts convert to high value brands like Amazon.
  2. Staples in-store has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  3. A link for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select card with 80,000 miles after $1,000 spend showed up over the weekend from a new in-flight offer. You’ll need a flight attendant code to finish the application but pretty much any six digit number starting with ’00’ will work. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Rakuten’s $50 or 5,000 Membership Rewards referral offer for both the referral and referred is now running through December 31.

    Dormant Rakuten accounts aren’t valuable in the same way that Capital One Shopping accounts are, but they’re not un-useful.

Happy Monday!

The banana slicer: also not un-useful.