Credit card companies have been changing annual fees and beefing up rewards—or plan to roll out new cards later this year and next. Some of the changes affect some winners in our annual Best Rewards Credit Cards.
Good news for anyone considering the Alliant Cashback Visa, which won silver in our Flat-Rate Cash Back (Worth the Fee) category: There’s no longer a $99 annual fee. There’s also a new tiered rewards program with no cap on rewards. Before, rewards were capped at $250. Now you can earn either 2.5% cash back on all spending up to $10,000 (with purchases after that earning 1.5%) or 1.5% overall if you don’t qualify for tier-one rewards status. (See www.alliantcreditunion.org for details.) Current cardholders have automatically been enrolled in tier-one rewards to give them time to set up an Alliant high-rate checking account, which is a requirement to qualify for tier-one status.
Chase now allows holders of most of its co-branded travel cards to sign up for a free one-year DashPass membership that also comes with some reduced service fees. The cards on our best list eligible for the deal include the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Visa, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa and World of Hyatt Visa.
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The Capital One SavorOne Mastercard, which took silver in our Dining Rewards category, increased cash back on grocery purchases from 2% to 3% and now pays 3% on eligible streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. Subscriptions and purchases from Amazon Prime, AT&T TV and Verizon FIOS On Demand are excluded.
The American Express Platinum card (silver in Premium Travel Rewards) is raising its annual fee to $695 on January 1. But cardholders will now get an annual statement credit of $179 for a membership to CLEAR, the airport security clearance network. Cardholders can also earn up to $240 a year on subscriptions to the New York Times, Peacock, Audible and SiriusXM, along with other perks.
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