Executive Summary -
Update - Starting in 2013, Discover will be replacing this card with the IT Card and will no longer be taking applications. Prior to this, it was one of our top recommendations when it comes to cash back cards. It has an online shopping portal called shopdiscover which pays higher rebates for merchants than other cash back portals. It is also the only card that lets you exchange your rebates for up to double the value of their gift card partners. Cardholders also stand to win prizes every month just for using the card.
Many readers ask me "what type of card is the Discover® More® Card? Well, the short answer is that it is a card that allows you to earn cash back. The longer and more precise answer is that it is a "rotating category cash rewards card". In this review, we will look at their main features. In this introduction, we will summarize them neatly here in one page.
Base - Let's start with the base rate. This is a tiered cash back credit card. You can potentially earn up to 1% rebate. Here is how it works. The tiered cash back formula is based on your annual expenditure. For the first $1,500 in annual expenditure, you earn 0.25%. For the next $1,500 in annual expenditure (ie $1,500 to $3,000), you earn 0.50% rebate. Once your annual expenditures exceed $3,000, you earn 1% rebate. You can earn unlimited rebates which do not expire.
5% Rebates for Rotating Categories - Discover also allows you to earn 5% rebates on various categories that rotate once every quarter. Below is 2012 schedule.
January-March: Gas, Museums, Movies (cap of $1500)
April-June: Restaurants and Movies (cap of $1500)
July-September: Gas, Movies, Theme Parks (cap of $1500)
October-December: 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in purchases at Department Stores and everywhere you shop online through December.
Earn More When You ShopShop - The Shop Discover is another great feature of all Discover cards (and perhaps the best). When you use your Discover card to shop at partner merchants from Discover's website (shopdiscover.com), you will earn anywhere between 5% and 20% discounts. So rather than going directly to the merchants' website, all you have to do is just to login into your account and navigate to the merchant's site from there (it is essentially the same site - but it tracks your purchases made on your Discover Card).
Double the value of your rebates - But best of all, the Discover® More® Card is that you can up to double the value of the cash rebates you have earned by exchanging them for over 100 merchant partners gift certificate. That means that a $20.00 rebate can turn into a $40.00 gift certificate. We will highlight the merchants in a later part of the review.
There is No Foreign Transaction Fee - One of the great thing about Discover Cards (not just this one) is that they have no foreign transaction fees. Most bank usually charge a 3% FX transaction fee. So having this card will save you 3% when you use it abroad.
Virtual Account Numbers - This card also provides you with a unique virtual number each time you use in online to shop. This helps protect your account if there is a security breach on the merchant's end because the virtual number will be different from your actual one.
Now that we have gone through the key features, let's look at them in more detail and also compare them its' peers.
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