BBVA Compass NBA TripleDouble American Express Card Review: 5x Everywhere & 20,000 Point Bonus

Recently BBVA Compass announced that they were going to offer a NBA co-branded credit card, this called is officially called the BBVA Compass NBA American Express Card Featuring TripleDouble Rewards. This card has finally launched, so I decided to take a look at to see if it was any good. Here are the main features you should keep in mind:

• No annual fee
• 20,000 bonus points when you spend $500 or more in qualifying transactions within the first 90 days of account opening
• 20% off anytime you use your card at NBAstore.com
• Card earns at the following rates:
  • 5x points during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals
  • 3x points on qualifying NBA tickets, NBA in-stadium transactions and NBAStore.com transactions
  • 2x points at supermarkets and gas stations
  • 1x points on all other purchases
• 0% introductory APR on purchases for first six months
• 0%-3.99% intro balance transfer APR for 12 months (there is a $10 or 4% fee whichever is greater for balance transfers)

How Much Are Points Worth

Points can be redeemed for the following:

• Cash back
• Statement credits
• Merchandise
• Tickets
• Gift cards
• VIP experiences

Points are worth one penny each when redeeming for cash back or statement credit and you must redeem a minimum of 2,500 points ($25) at a time. At the moment BBVA Compass don’t make the rest of the reward catalog public, but we do know how much some items will cost in points:

• One year subscription to Hoop magazine: 1,500 points
• NBA2K15 game: 5,500 points
• TV (unknown brand/model): 567,750 points
• Pizza for the family: 2,500 points
• Home theater sound system: 455,250 points
• NBA locker room experience for you and three friends: 500,000 points
• Face to face experience with one of your favorite NBA stars: 1,000,000 points
• One on one meeting with James Harden or Kevin Durant: 1,300,000 points

Things Of Interest

Given that you can earn at least 2% cash back on all purchases, there are really only a few things of interest with this card:

• 20% discount on NBAstore.com purchases. My first thought was I wonder if you can purchase giftcards and resell them for a profit, but the resell rate is 70% of facevalue so you’d be loosing money. The best discount you can get on purchasing these gift cards is only 11%, so if you did actually shop there often you’d be saving some money but most people find the NBAstore to be overpriced. As with the spending bonus you’d really be getting a 23% discount.
• 10,000 point sign up bonus. As mentioned before, points are worth about 1¢ each making this sign up bonus worth $100. In the scheme of things this is pretty low for a cash sign up bonus and even worse when you consider the annual fee of $50 is not waived the first year.
• 5x points during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals. To begin with I wasn’t sure on whether you’d earn 5x on just NBA purchases or all purchases, but in their F.A.Q they state the following (emphasis mine):

plus earn 5X points on all purchases (not just NBA purchases) during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA Finals.

5x Everywhere

Obviously how useful the 5x everywhere is will depend on what credit limit BBVA give you, how tolerant they are to large spend and if you can pay off your card mid cycle without issue. We can answer the credit limit question somewhat as BBVA offer other credit cards. One card they’ve offered in the past is the BBVA Compass ClearPoint credit card, if we have a look at creditboards credit pull application we can see that there are 8 data points for this card.

Highest Limit	Lowest Limit	Average Limit
$15,000	4,000	$12,328.57

NBA All Star Weekend Dates

Unfortunately All Star Weekend has already passed for 2015, so we won’t be able to get 5x during that time this year.

• 2016: 14th, February
• 2015: 15th, February
• 2014: 16th February
• 2013: 17th February

Presumably this means you’ll earn 5x points on both the Saturday and Sunday.

NBA Finals

• 2014-2015: June 4th – 14th
• 2013-2014: June 5th – 15th
• 2012-2013: June 6th – 20th

F.A.Q’s

What Credit Bureau Do BBVA Compass Pull?

Another advantage to this card is that they pull TransUnion (which at least where I live is the least used credit bureau). In one case they pulled Equifax, but that person had frozen their Experian & TransUnion credit reports. At least one report of them pulling Experian in the comments.

Is There A Limit To The Amount Of Points You Can Earn?

There are no limits to the amount of points that you can earn. Points also do not expire as long as your account is open and in good standing.

Card Designs

Eastern Conference

Western Conference

Eligiblity

This card is issued by BBVA Compass, they accept residents that are over the age of 18 from all states except Iowa, Utah & Wisconsin. Those living in Alabama & Nebraska must be 19 and those in Mississippi must be 21.

Final Thoughts

This is a very good card, $200 sign up bonus and 5x everywhere twice a year. In my experience it’s a bit of a hassle with the 5x everywhere during the valid dates, but it’s worth the trouble. I signed up for the following two reasons:

• It’s a TransUnion credit pull. I barely have any hard pulls on my TransUnion credit report, so having another really won’t affect me that much.
• It offers 5x everywhere twice a year with a bit of hassle. Nothing really runs smoothly with BBVA, so expect fraud alerts and things not posting as 5x everywhere correctly.

Some people they will be much better off getting a credit card that has a high cash sign up bonus or a card that earns 5% cash back in select categories year round.