My Experience Signing Up For The U.S. Bank Smartly 4% Credit Card (A Comprehensive Review)

Originally posted 12/5/24. Reposting 12/17/24 as I finally completed the process to get the 4% and got all the other accounts set up. Updated the post below with all the details.

Bank of America 2.62%

Until recently, the Bank of America 2.62% setup was the king of simple cashback rewards, better than the standard 2% earned on other cards. It’s possible to earn 2.62% everywhere with no annual fees, and I my experience with the Bank of America program was overall positive.

The catch to all this, of course, is the $100,000 deposit requirement. Most of us move over brokerage funds or retirement funds to meet that requirement, but not everyone can do that.

Robinhood 3%

Robinhood is in roll-out phase of their 3% everywhere card. You do need to spend $50/$60 annually on Robinhood Gold to get that card.

There have also been reports of Robinhood not allowing rent payments, tax payments, or large purchases from earning rewards. And there’s apparently a $40 replacement fee if you ever need to replace the card. Ugh.

Enter: U.S. Bank 2%-4%

The new kid on the block in U.S. Bank with their Smartly Visa 2%-4% card. The setup is similar to that of Bank of America where those with $100,000 in assets with the bank get top tier rewards on the card and earn a whopping 4% cash back.

The card has no annual fee. There’s no signup bonus on the Smartly card. There are foreign transaction fees. They offer 0% APR for 12 months, though personally I don’t typically use those offers on personal cards.

It’s worth noting that the card also earns 2% everywhere by default, without the need for any deposits with U.S. Bank. And you can get 2.5% everywhere with just $5,000 on deposit. Both of these tiers will be interesting to some people. Further, there’s a 3% tier for those with $50,000 on deposit.

My Signup Experience

I don’t manufacture spend, but I do often have nice chunks of organic spend which includes income taxes (federal, state, business) and property taxes. I’m more comfortable paying with a credit card than a bank. In the past I’ve often paid taxes with the 2.62% Bank of America card – those rewards usually cover the fee associated with paying taxes on a card and allows even a small profit.

If all goes well, the math will work out even better with the U.S. Bank 4% card. These rewards would even cover fees of 3%+. There are various other places (rents, school tuitions, Plastiq, etc) who add on a ~3% transaction fee, and the 4% rewards on the Smartly card can cover that.

And so I decided to give the U.S. Bank Smartly 4% card a shot.

After applying I heard absolutely nothing from U.S. Bank for many days. Around a week after applying I received an email indicating approval. Yay!

There have been those who were only approved with minuscule credit lines, but I was lucky to have received a reasonable $15,000 credit line. I confirmed the credit line with a rep over the phone. (Regardless, reports indicate they are good about raising credit lines afterward.)

If you already have personal accounts with U.S. Bank, you should see the card pop up in your login and the credit line will be visible there. There’s no way to use the card immediately before the physical card arrives. Regardless, I won’t be using the card for some time until I complete the qualifications for the 4% rate.

Reminder: U.S. Bank allows various personal credit cards to be product changed into the new Smartly card. You can avoid the application and the guesswork on the credit line by using the product change option. I didn’t have any U.S. Bank personal cards and I applied for it as a new card.

Opening the Savings Accounts

In order to qualify for the 4% earn rate, you need to have a savings account. You don’t need to hold funds in the savings account as you can have the $100k in a brokerage/IRA account (or part in the savings and part in the brokerage). But you need to be a savings account holder.

There have been those who – after getting approved for the 4% card – got declined for the savings account for reasons unknown.

After getting the credit card approval, I cautiously applied for the savings account and was instantly approved. Hooray!

The only hiccup I ran into was on the $250 credit card funding. I tried two separate U.S. Bank Triple Cash cards and both got declined. (Others have had success with that card.) And then the system prompted me to use ACH funding – after two fails it forces you to use the bank transfer funding method. And so I ended up linking my regular bank account to fund the minimum $25 opening deposit.

Opening the Brokerage Account

If you don’t want to hold $100k in the savings account, the other option is to holds stocks or mutual funds in a U.S. Bancorp brokerage account or IRA account. (We’ll discuss fees later in this article.)

I had no issues opening a brokerage account and was instantly approved. The hiccup came when I tried transferring assets from within the login and got an error message, “only certain USBI brokerage account types are eligible for online account transfers from other institutions.”

Speaking with a U.S. Bank investment rep, I learned that U.S. Bank does support online asset transfers, like all other modern brokerages. He mentioned that my account needed time to fully settle before transferring assets and that I should try again in a couple of days.

He also mentioned that they are having issues recently with the online asset transfer system, and so it might not work even after my account is fully settled and open.

He said that I can call into the investment department (800-888-4700) to initiate the asset transfer. They’ll confirm transfer details over the phone and create a form with all the details. They’ll email me a link which will prompt me to login and simply sign the form in order to get the transfer going.

In the end, I was able to do the online asset transfer option and it worked painlessly. The only hiccup I had was the system asked for PDF statement from my prior brokerage to help speed things up, but the system errored out when I tried to upload the statement, so I just completed the transfer without that optional PDF upload and it worked perfectly. Also note: The system sends you to a pdf with the details of your transfer for your records; you don’t need to send any physical form in.

It took less than one week from when I initiated the online brokerage transfer until it showed up properly in my U.S. Bank login. (I have not yet been able to confirm that the cost basis came through properly.) Within hours/days, I was able to see that the card is updated to earn 4% – this informtion is visible by going into the ‘Rewards’ tab on the card.

Reportedly, you can call in to have automatic Dividend Reinvestment (DRIP) set up. Personally I like manually reinvesting so I’ll leave it be.

Opening the Checking Account

This step is optional, but since I’ll anyway have a credit card, savings account, and brokerage account with U.S. Bank, I decided to make it a clean sweep and take advantage of the $450 U.S. Bank checking account bonus. I applied soon after getting approved for the card and savings and brokerage accounts.

• Opening a checking account also gets you 100 free trades per calendar year.

I wanted to stack it with the $90 Swagbucks/MyPoints bonus, but apparently that offer is targeted and I can’t seem to find it in my Swagbucks or MyPoints. And so I just applied directly on the $450 checking bonus page.

The checking account application went pending and I waited over a week until getting a physical mailer from U.S. Bank about it. The letter clarified that I need to call into the authentication department in order to get the checking account approved.

I called in and the rep easily approved the application. I immediately got an email confirmation of the account approval. She mentioned something about there having been an influx of applications and therefore many had to go through the manual application process.

She also confirmed that they can see the $450 promo offer is still properly attached to the account. I’ll first fund my account $25 via external transfer. Then I’ll try doing two $4,000 transfers to meet the direct deposit requirement and get the $450 bonus. It looks like most ACH transfers count for this. I’ll track my progress for the bonus on the dedicated page in the login (“Track Progress Toward Your Cash Reward”).

Update: A few different ACH sources all counted toward the $8,000 threshold. The tracker updated along the way (albeit with delays). And, within a few days of meeting the $8,000 threshold, my $450 bonus posted.

Avoiding Fees

U.S. Bank does have a competitive savings account with decent APY rates, and someone flush with cash might consider parking $100,000 there to be eligible for the 4%. If you do so, you don’t need to open a brokerage account with U.S. Bank, and then you have no fees to worry about.

It is worth noting that at high cash levels, even small interest differences can really matter. E.g. if you’d otherwise be with any account which earns .5% higher interest (or that amount of tax savings) you’ll end up losing $500 per year on the $100k. Ouch.

Instead, most people are planning on moving over $100,000 into U.S. Bancorp Investments. They offer a self directed option there, and you get 100 free trades per year on the account, provided that you also have the Smartly checking account.

There is a “$95 Account transfers and IRA closeout fee“, but if the plan is to remain with U.S. Bank long term that wouldn’t be a major concern. Furthermore, there are often brokerages (like Fidelity) who will cover transfer fees on large asset transfers.

$50 Annual Fee Waiver

The main fee that everyone is discussing is the $50 annual account fee. Per the fine print, that fee is waived with $250,000 balance.

And so, for someone who wants to keep this setup entirely fee free, the price just went up from $100k to $250k. (There has been some discussion about IRA accounts having a lower $50k threshold necessary to waive the $50 fee, but I’m seeing conflicting info on that point.)

I was considering moving over $100k and just swallowing the annual fee. I reasoned that the extra 1%-2% in credit card rewards can justify it.

I chatted on the phone with a U.S. Bank investments rep who told me that brokerage accounts with $100k+ will have the $50 fee waived. I inquired about the $250k mentioned on the site, but he confirmed with me that there’s always a minimum required and that the minimum is now $100k. (Yes, I asked the question multiple times from multiple angles.)

The $250k is only for someone who is using combined balances of deposit accounts and brokerage account, but $100k in a brokerage alone is sufficient to waive the fee. Others report hearing the same from bank reps. It’s also been noted that the $50 fee hits after 12 months from opening, so you have a full year to get yourself to $100k.

I can’t promise you that there won’t be a fee with $100k balance, but I have a good feeling about it and so I’m personally going to take the chance on it.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, for me, whether this whole thing ends up being worthwhile will come down to whether U.S. Bank gets petty about which transactions earn rewards. We saw them crack down on the Altitude Reserve mobile wallet 3x earnings to dis-allow large gift card purchases and similar. There’s a a good chance they’ll do something similar with the Smartly 4% card.

Even if they do crack down on large gift card purchases, hopefully they’ll allow tax and rent payments to go through and earn rewards. Worst case, I’ll just use the card for smaller, boring purchases. There should be some value in that too, though, honestly, I wouldn’t have set the whole thing up for that. Hopefully the $50 annual fee won’t be an issue, as discussed above.