Green$ense Platinum MasterCard Review: 25¢ Per Transaction

This is another post in our series “Weird Wednesdays” where every Wednesday we look at a slightly unusual or unknown credit card. You can view more posts in this series by clicking here.

Today we’re going to be looking at the Green$ense Platinum MasterCard. This card is actually offered by two banks: Charter One & Citizens Bank. This is actually the same bank, just operating under two different names depending on the location the branches are in.

To be eligible you need to live within their service areas, below are the states each of these banks operate in and a direct link to the Green$ense card on their site.

• Charter One: MI & OH
• Citizens Bank: CT, DE, MA, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, and VT

Card Benefits

Here are the marketing highlights of this card:

• 25¢ per credit card transaction (minimum of 10 per month and maximum of 80)
• 0% Introductory APR for the first 15 billing cycles
• $0 introductory balance transfer fee for first 60 days
• No annual fee

Rewards Program

As mentioned above, the rewards program is a little different than most. Rather than offering a percentage based on how much you spend, they offer a flat bonus for each credit card transaction. Obviously this means the smaller your purchase, the better off you’ll be with this card.

There are a few requirements to get this 25¢ per transaction:

• Must complete at least 10 transactions per billing cycle
• Must have a checking account with Citizens Bank/Charter One [There is currently a sign up bonus of $100 for these accounts]
• Must enroll in online services & receive paperless statements
• You’re limited to 80 transactions per month ($20 or $240 per year)

Let’s assume you meet all of those requirements and then compare this offer against a 1%, 2% and 3% cash back card. Below is the break even point, if your purchase is over this dollar amount then you’d be better off using the percentage cash back card rather than the Green$ense card.

1%	2%	3%
$25	$12.50	$8.34

As you can see it really only makes sense to use this card on small transactions. There are a number of ways to generate a lot of small dollar transactions but doing this excessively would likely lead to a shut down.

Why This Card Is Somewhat Interesting

This card is interesting because both of these banks also offer a card called “CashBack Platinum”, this card offers 5% cash back for the first 90 days on grocery and drug store purchases (and 10% on gas purchases for the first $1,000 in purchases. Although this 10% category changes often), this makes it an attractive option for those wanting to manufacture credit card spend or those who have a high volume of purchases in those categories.

The problem is that after the 90 days is up the card earns 1% cash back on all purchases which basically makes it useless. One option would be downgrade that CashBack Platinum card to this Green$ense card and then this use whenever you’re making low value purchases.

You’d need to make sure you’re making at least ten of these every billing cycle otherwise you’d lose out on the 25¢ bonus.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t going to be an option for everybody and really only makes sense if you already have the CashBack Platinum card. Some people might find the balance transfer option attractive, but I hope all of my readers aren’t carrying a balance to begin with.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. If you have any card suggestions for Weird Wednesdays, please contact me so I can cover them.