In this weeks weird card Wednesday we will looking at the VITAL credit card, self described as the “credit card that pays you to share”.
Card Basics
- No annual fee
- Earn 1% cash back on all purchases
- ‘Share To Earn program’
Given that this card earns 1% cash back on all purchases and there are lots of other cards that earn 2% cash back on all purchases, the share to earn program needs to be very useful to make this card worth using. Let’s take a look at in more detail. Everytime you share your Vital link and somebody signs up, you’ll receive 4 points. If they refer somebody you receive 2 points, if that person refers somebody else you receive another point. To help you visualize I created this handy graphic:
The amount of money you earn from this share to earn program depends on the total spend in the Vital system. The example they give is somebody with 280 points earning $525 when there are 100,000 total Vital users spending an average of $1,500. That means cardholders are spending $150,000,000 per month in total. It looks you’re earning $1.875 per point in this case. We don’t know the total amount of points in the system so we can’t see how much they are paying out. If that $150,000,000 was instead put on a card that earn 2% cash back a total of $3,000,000 would be earned. With Vital $1,500,000 is being earned by cardholders and then an undisclosed amount is going into the share a friend pool. I’m guessing it’s less than $1,500,000 though.
One thing in particular that doesn’t make sense is that you get points for referring friends, but you only need to spend $1 per month. That means you’re actually best off referring as many friends as possible and spending $1 per month (and also getting them to spend $1 per month). Then you’re making money off the people using this card as a daily driver.
Our Verdict
In case I wasn’t clear enough, this card is terrible and awful. I’d call it the pyramid scheme of credit cards, but I think they prefer multi level marketing term these days. Getting this card makes no sense, you should get a card that earns 2% cash back on all purchases. If you really value your friendships so little that you’d be willing to sell them out for this, I’d recommend trying to make some new friends.
Looks like they’re making progress 😉 just got an email from them with an invitation to fill a form for beta testing: “VITAL is gearing up for Beta!” From email: “Beta testing phase will be limited to 5,000 members” and “We will be accepting responses for the next 7 days.”
William Charles 
Chuck
It seems like there’s a growing trend of awful cards with a minimal vertical-oriented design practically born for Facebook ads. A few suggestions for future Weird Wednesdays if you want to keep doing it (I love the idea): I get a lot of use out of my Marvel Mastercard for Amazon sans Prime and bookstore purchases. The customer service is also surprisingly good if you can forgive the lack of an app. With the Quicksilver Spotify promotion coming to a close, I’ve stumbled on the Playstation Card since it gives 10% back on Spotify which I believe stacks with the 5% discount for purchasing through the PS4 app. For anyone that uses a PS4 a lot I’d say this one is a solid investment since it makes points on Playstation purchases, that pay for Playstation purchases. Finally, I think a lot of people forget that Target’s REDcard comes in a debit flavor. It’s identical to the store credit card but without the hard pull and average age of accounts hit.
This is what happens when regulations are loosened and the CFPB is dismantled. Wonder who we have to thank for that.
Thank Trump for that he does not believe is any type of regulation. That includes toilet flushing time.
Hey DoC,
are you going to create a separate entry just for our referral links or can I go ahead and post mine here…? 😛
:@
I guess if you’re down you can share this card with your enemies/archrivals and not your friends
Now that is funny I was offered this card program! I guess I got enough enemies to get plenty of sales if they don’t kill me off first.
This is such a horrible card, verging on fraudulent, that any blog or reviewer who does anything but call it out as a scam should never be listened to again.
Great info and great discussion!
This quote could apply to any and all pyramid schemes.
” If you really value your friendships so little that you’d be willing to sell them out for this, I’d recommend trying to make some new friends.”
+1
They literally use a pyramid in their marketing…
Where? The pyramid is an image I created
This card should be named after Charles Ponzi.
First! Thanks for the honest review! Asksebby and Credit Shifu are like the only other ones telling it like it is. Tons of other bloggers are like, “click my referral! click my referral!”
Those two “usually” just make a video of the text on this site :))
LOL I didn’t expect someone to point that about but, hahahah
lol