Update 2/2/21: This is now a permanent benefit.
Original Post:
Bank of America just sent out an email to their Travel Rewards (no-annual-fee) cardholders with an addition redemption option, aside from the standard travel redemption:
- Through December 31, redeem your Travel Rewards points to offset grocery, dining, and takeout purchases.
Usually you can only redeem rewards to offset travel expenses. Through end of year, they are allowing redeeming for grocery, dining, and takeout instead. You can even redeem against grocery/dining charges already charged over the past 12 months.
Really nice of them to make this change. I’ve been wishing Barclay did this on their Arrival cards as I have a bunch of points to cash out; we haven’t heard anything from Barclay yet.
Bank of America also is offering their Premium Rewards cardholders a $50 statement credit.
Thanks to all those who sent this in
I talked to a rep and redemptions in non-travel and dining categories are $0.008 per point ($25 / 3125 points).
This is only worth it if you have sufficient travel and dining expenses to offset which can be redeemed for $0.01 per point.
I got approved for this and the information they send does not mention any groceries or supermarkets for travel credit redemption – only restaurants.
Does NOT include groceries. I found out the hard way. It only includes travel and dining. Please update this site as it’s providing erroneous information.
I only have Travel + Dining & Takeout (no Grocery).
FAQ backs this up as well : https://www.managerewardsonline.bankofamerica.com/REWARDSapp/travelrwd/faqs?2
Maybe different offers for different users?
Are the deals of the BOA travel reward card equal to cash rewards? I have the travel reward card but feel that the deals on that card seems be much less that doctorofcredit’s post…..
It is important to note that this benefit is only available on the personal version of the Travel Rewards card. I have the business version and do not have the option to redeem points for grocery and dining purchases. However, I have found that Uber Eats codes as a travel purchase since the charge is categorized as a travel related ride share charge.
If you have the premium rewards card, you could transfer all the points earned by travel rewards and then redeemed as statement credit/cash at 1 cent/point. Just FYI
On the business version of the no annual fee Travel Rewards card, the cash redemption value for non-travel related charges is 0.6 cents/point vs 1 cent/point for travel charges.
If you have the premium rewards card, there’s no point in having the TR right? Also, there’s no point in having TR when you can get PR assuming you can use the $100 travel credit to offset the fee. Am I missing anything?
Correct.
Some people may not want to jump through the hoop of using the incidental credit to offset the AF on the Premium Rewards, but it’s generally pretty easy to do; BofA is much more permissive with it than Amex is for their incidental credit.
I’ve stopped flying for the last year and have too many frequent flyer miles anyway, so I cancelled my Premium Rewards in October when the fee was up, in lieu of using my CSR for the bonused categories.
Yes, as the PR earns a minimum of 1.5 points per dollar spent that equal to cash at 1 cent per point. The TR earns 1.5 points per dollar with a max value of 1 cent per point on travel only.
My brain is slow today. Is this more than just convivence in converting non-bonus rewards into an easy redemption?
Outside of MS is there a reason to use a 2.62% card for groceries or dining?
When they added this last year I took all the points I was hoarding for travel and redeemed against a bunch of ‘oh, that was considered dining?’ options before opening the sock drawer.
Isn’t this a 1.5% card for those who don’t have deposit accounts with BoA?
Yes.
If you stooze your way up to 100k for 3 months you can keep the Platinum Honors status for 15 months though.
If you used TR for groceries or dining (so you can cash out points) instead of, say, a 5% card, then you’re really just losing a couple of percent of your redemption value, so not bad if you want to use the points to cash out.
Personally, I’ll just wait til next time I get PR.
What card consistently offers dining at 5%? I am dining with my CSR and groceries on my BCP, at least until I hit $6,000.
BoA Cash Rewards with Dining selected as the bonus category. (This requires Platinum Honors status.)
Citi prestige has 5x and debit payments.
BoA cash rewards w/platinum honors is %5.25 with a quarterly limit.
I always try and carry a GC with 5x already baked in. Staples is more consistent than any bank.
Thanks for looking over my math
SamL
Same here, I use small denomination VGC and MCGC for purchases that I won’t return, but for dining because they authorize the value plus the tip that can be a little problematic. On Cash Rewards I select online shopping as my category, as I suspect most sharp card users do.
@calwatch, a 5% cashback is not the real point, it could be any X% with X>2.625.
The real point is that if you spend, say, $10,000 on TR, then you want to redeem $262.50, so you only need to have spent $262.50 out of $10,000 on travel (or expanded category), and you might forgo some better (than 2.625%) cashback on just that $262.50 spend, which might cost just a few bucks. So the true cashback rate is a few hundredths of a percent less than 2.625%.
So now what’s the point of the Premium Rewards card?
Not much considering the TR is so flexible now
If you can make use of the $100 airline incidental credit (at least buy a AA gift card with it) the PR is essentially free.
Additionally, Premium Rewards has trip cancellation/lost luggage protection and Global Entry/Precheck reimbursement, but Travel Rewards does not.
Dining is a permanent benefit as far as redeeming. Groceries are not.