With airlines having largely devalued their frequent flyer programs over the years, there’s more value than ever before in getting a cash back card. And the Bank of America® Premium Rewards® credit card has the potential to be the single most lucrative cash back credit card out there for everyday spending, as you can earn up to 2.625% cash back on all purchases. That’s virtually unheard of, though there are some hoops to jump through.
Link: Learn more about the Bank of America® Premium Rewards® credit card with 60K bonus points
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card summary & key details
Let’s go over the details of the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card, including the welcome bonus, annual fee, rewards structure, and perks. Let me again emphasize that this card might just seem ordinary at first, so you’ll want to read on to the section about the BofA Rewards program.
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card annual fee: $95
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card welcome offer: 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in purchases in the first 90 days of account opening
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card points earning rate: 2x points on travel and dining, 1.5x points on all other purchases
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card statement credits: Up to $100 in airline incidental statement credits annually, up to $100 in credits for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry application fees every four years
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card travel and purchase protections: Trip delay reimbursement, trip cancellation/interruption coverage, baggage delay insurance, lost luggage reimbursement, emergency evacuation and transportation coverage, rental car insurance, purchase protection, extended warranty protection, return protection
- Bank of America Premium Rewards Card foreign transaction fees: None
- Best for: Bank of America customers who qualify for a higher BofA Rewards tier, and anyone who prefers simple cash back over transferring points to travel partners
Here are my thoughts on the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card’s pros and cons:
Premium Rewards Card pros | Premium Rewards Card cons |
|---|---|
Unrivaled return on everyday spending if you qualify for the highest tier of the BofA Rewards program | You’ll need a combined average balance of $1,000,000 or more to earn the highest bonus rewards through BofA Rewards |
$100 annual airline incidental credit effectively cancels out the annual fee | Points are worth 1.0 cent each and can’t be redeemed with travel partners |
Includes valuable travel coverage |
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card bonus, eligibility, & fees
First let’s cover the basics of the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card, including its welcome bonus eligibility, and fees. Then we’ll get into the BofA Rewards™ program, which is what transforms this card from ordinary to extraordinary.
Premium Rewards Card 60K bonus points offer
The Bank of America Premium Rewards Card is offering a best-ever welcome bonus of 60,000 points after spending $4,000 within the first 90 days. Points on this card can be redeemed for 1.0 cent each, meaning the bonus is worth $600 cash back, which is quite good.
Note that this card had the same bonus of 50,000 points for years, so this new bonus is 20% better than before. If you’ve been considering this card, you’ll definitely want to apply with this current offer.
Premium Rewards Card bonus eligibility & rules
Per the terms of the application, the welcome bonus may not be available if you currently have this card, or have had the card in the past 24 months. However, you should be eligible for the bonus if you’ve had any other Bank of America card.
Premium Rewards Card annual fee
The Bank of America Premium Rewards Card has a $95 annual fee, which isn’t waived for the first year. This puts the annual fee in line with many other mid-range credit cards, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (review) and Citi Strata Premier® Card (review). Personally I think the annual fee is easy to justify from the $100 airline credit alone.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card points earning structure
The Bank of America Premium Rewards Card offers 2x points on travel and dining, and 1.5x points on all other purchases, all with no foreign transaction fees. Since points can be redeemed for 1.0 cent each, that means the card offers 1.5-2% cash back.
On the surface that’s not too exciting, since there are some other cash back cards that offer the equivalent of 2% back on all purchases. But as I’ll discuss below, the BofA Rewards program can increase your rewards by up to 75%, putting this card in a league of its own.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card points redemptions
As I mentioned above, the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card offers points that can be redeemed for 1.0 cent each.
How does that work in practice? When your points balance is 2,500 or higher, you can choose from a variety of ways to redeem your points at that rate, including:
- A statement credit
- An electronic deposit into a Bank of America checking or savings account
- A contribution to an eligible Cash Management Account with Merrill Wealth Management or Merrill, or College 529 savings account held at Merrill
Points on the card also don’t expire, as long as the account remains in good standing. Points can be easily redeemed online by logging in to your BofA account and selecting the “Rewards” tab, or you can call 800.434.8313.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card perks
Premium Rewards Card $100 airline incidental credit
One of the easiest ways to justify the $95 annual fee on the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card is with the card’s annual $100 airline incidental credit. What qualifies for the airline fee credit? This includes purchases made on domestic-originated flights on certain US airlines, including for the following:
preferred seating upgrades, ticket change/cancellation fees, checked baggage fees, in-flight entertainment, onboard food and beverage charges, and airport lounge fees affiliated with eligible airline carriers
Meanwhile, the terms state that the following doesn’t qualify for this credit:
Airline ticket purchases, mileage point purchases, mileage point transfer fees, gift cards, duty-free purchases, award tickets and fees incurred with airline alliance partners do not qualify
You have to use your card to pay eligible incidental fee transactions, and statement credits will post to your account within seven days. There’s no registration or airline designation requirement. Anecdotally I’ve seen pretty positive reports with being able to use this perk.
Premium Rewards Card TSA PreCheck or Global Entry credit
The Bank of America Premium Rewards Card also offers a TSA PreCheck or Global Entry fee credit once every four years. Just charge the eligible fee of up to $100 to your card, and you’ll automatically be reimbursed. You can even use this for someone else, as many cards offer these credits nowadays.
Premium Rewards Card travel protections
The Bank of America Premium Rewards Card also comes with a generous set of travel insurance perks. Hopefully you’ll never need to use them — and you’ll need to pay for eligible travel using the card for them to kick in — but they provide some nice peace of mind for travelers.
- Trip delay reimbursement: Up to $500 per ticket for you and eligible family members when a covered trip is delayed for more than 12 hours
- Trip cancellation/interruption insurance: Up to $2,500 for non-refundable passenger fares if your trip is canceled or cut short for a covered reason such as sickness
- Baggage delay coverage: Up to $100 per day for up to five days when your bags are delayed or misdirected by a common carrier for more than six hours
- Lost luggage reimbursement: Coverage for your luggage and its contents if they’re lost or stolen
- Travel and emergency assistance services: Help coordinating medical, legal, and other services when you’re traveling
- Emergency evacuation and transportation coverage: Medical services and transportation coverage if you or an immediate family member is injured or becomes sick on a trip that requires emergency care
- Rental car insurance: Secondary rental car coverage that kicks in after your primary car insurance
Premium Rewards Card purchase protection
The Premium Rewards Card has some purchase protection benefits, too. As with the travel coverage, you’ll need to use this card as payment in order to receive coverage for a given purchase.
- Purchase protection: Repair, replacement, or reimbursement for an eligible item if it’s stolen or damaged within 90 days of purchase
- Extended warranty: Doubles the time period of the manufacturers’ warranty on eligible items, up to one additional year
- Return protection: Reimbursement for the cost of an eligible item if you’re dissatisfied with the item within 90 days of the purchase and the retailer won’t accept the return
BofA Rewards™ program
This is where the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card goes from average to incredible. As mentioned above, ordinarily, this card earns rewards worth 1.5-2% back, though you can do significantly better than that in conjunction with this program, making this a best-in-class card.
BofA Rewards program tiers & bonuses
Bank of America has the BofA Rewards program, which has tiers based on your combined balance with Bank of America. Here are the tiers, the balances required to earn them, and the bonus points you earn on your credit card rewards for each tier:
Tier | Combined balance required | Credit card rewards bonus |
|---|---|---|
Member | No minimum | 10% |
Preferred Plus | $30,000+ | 25% |
Preferred Honors | $100,000+ | 50% |
Premier | $1,000,000+ | 75% |
Balances are based on the 3-month combined average daily balance across eligible Bank of America deposit accounts and Merrill investment accounts (same as under the old Preferred Rewards structure).
Put another way, if you have the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card and belong to the Premier tier, you’re earning:
- 3.5% on dining and travel
- 2.625% on non-bonused spending
That’s an unrivaled return on everyday spending! For example, you could pay your taxes by credit card for a fee of 1.75% and earn 2.625% rewards, which gives you a 0.875% return on your tax payments. This is extremely generous, as Bank of America presumably loses money on most transactions.
BofA Rewards program eligible balance
Obviously having to deposit $1,000,000 with a bank is a significant hurdle. Even if you have a vault like Scrooge McDuck sitting around, you might not want to park it somewhere just to get elevated credit card rewards. However, I think it’s worth highlighting how much flexibility you have with that balance requirement.
The balance is determined based on your qualifying Bank of America deposit accounts and/or your qualifying investment accounts with Merrill. Eligible accounts include IRAs, so rolling over an old 401(k) could be an interesting option for some to help meet the higher thresholds (though of course check with your own financial advisors to determine if this makes sense for your situation).
Obviously, these are significant balances, though I’d note that you have some highly flexible options as to what qualifies toward these amounts, including being able to trade your own stocks, for example.
Is the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card worth it?
On the surface, the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card is a pretty average card with a nice welcome bonus and decent rewards structure. However, combining it with the BofA Rewards program potentially puts this card into a league of its own.
Being able to earn 2.625% cash back on your everyday spending is something that’s not offered by any other credit card. This card most definitely won’t be for everyone, but for those who either have assets with Bank of America or have the option of moving assets to Bank of America, this card is incredible.
I find the business case for this to be fascinating. It’s one thing for a card to have generous bonus categories, but I imagine Bank of America is losing money on every transaction here, and is using this card primarily to get people to increase their banking relationship with them.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred card comparison
Besides both having a $95 annual fee and earning bonus rewards on dining and travel, the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card and the Chase Sapphire Preferred card are pretty different.
While the Premium Rewards Card is especially valuable for BofA Rewards Premier tier members who want to earn a high return on everyday spending, the Sapphire Preferred earns the same amount of points no matter how much money you have parked with Chase. Its standout features include:
- The Chase Sapphire Preferred earns 3x points on dining as well as on gas stations, EV charging, vacation homes at select brands, and on top streaming services and online grocery orders. It also earns 5x points on Chase Travel, 2x points on all other travel, and 1x points on all other spending
- The Chase Sapphire Preferred earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points that you can transfer to airline and hotel partners, which routinely gets you more than 1.0 cent per point in value
- The Chase Sapphire Preferred comes with a $100 annual Chase Travel hotel credit and a Global Entry or TSA PreCheck or NEXUS application fee credit
Like the Premium Rewards Card, the Sapphire Preferred comes with strong travel protections. The better choice for you will come down to how you prefer to redeem your credit card points — and whether or not you can qualify for one of the higher tiers of BofA Rewards to earn a sizable bonus on rewards.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card vs. Citi Strata Premier
If you’re looking at other cards in the $95 annual fee range, the Citi Strata Premier is probably on your list of Bank of America Premium Rewards Card alternatives. Here are my favorite things about the card:
- The Citi Strata Premier has some of the most rewarding bonus categories for a card at this price point, including 3x points on air travel and non-Citi hotel purchases, and at restaurants, supermarkets, and gas and EV charging stations. It also earns 10x points on qualifying Citi Travel bookings and 1x points on everything else
- The Citi Strata Premier pairs well with other Citi credit cards, such as the Citi Double Cash® Card (learn more), letting you earn a minimum of 2x points on all your spending
- The Citi Strata Premier has a $100 annual hotel benefit, good for $100 off a single hotel stay of $500 or more (excluding taxes and fees) booked through Citi Travel
In my view, the Strata Premier has the Premium Rewards Card beat when it comes to the variety of its bonus spending categories, but the calculus could shift if you qualify for the Premier tier of BofA Rewards or even if you simply prefer redeeming points for cash back rather than through Citi’s transfer partners.
Bank of America Premium Rewards Card FAQs
Bottom line
If you have $1,000,000+ in assets with Bank of America, or can move them to Bank of America without much of an opportunity cost, I recommend applying for the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card. Even for others, it can be worth picking up the card for the solid welcome bonus, and seeing how you like it.
A word of caution: you must open and MAINTAIN a Bank of America checking account to get the enhanced benefits. As a significant Merrill Lynch investment customer, I had specifically asked the BofA rep what minimum balance I needed to maintain to qualify and was told "zero" so I let them open an account which I left unfunded and unused. Several months later, however, BofA closed the checking account due to "inactivity" so in response...
A word of caution: you must open and MAINTAIN a Bank of America checking account to get the enhanced benefits. As a significant Merrill Lynch investment customer, I had specifically asked the BofA rep what minimum balance I needed to maintain to qualify and was told "zero" so I let them open an account which I left unfunded and unused. Several months later, however, BofA closed the checking account due to "inactivity" so in response I have cancelled the credit card. The BofA app in general is about the most "kludgy" of the banking apps -- difficult to use, short on information, and rather confusing.
What you don't discuss is the premium version of this card which charges a higher annual fee but does not give enough more in benefits to justify it.
I'm a Preferred Rewards member, and this is my primary credit card I use while working here in the middle east. During the December holidays I used account credits to help off-set my trips to Thailand and Vietnam.
Last two commenters miss the point.
Any securities in a Merrill account fulfill the requirements, including SEP-IRA. I just transferred an IRA, including all the securities, I had at Schwab. No trade off involved.
It does qualify but you will also need a BofA checking account too. It does qualify for receiving the bonus.
It's a tough sell given the current interest rate environment. Was much better before.
1. BoA does not offer the most competitive IRA accounts.
2. $100k would generate $4000-5000 in another bank (pre-tax though)
3. Assuming I pay $300,000-400,000 in taxes (spread of .77 percent ~ $2600). Also, spread on delaying the actual cash outlay by another 30-45 days from the charge (.5%)
4. If I put all other non bonus...
It's a tough sell given the current interest rate environment. Was much better before.
1. BoA does not offer the most competitive IRA accounts.
2. $100k would generate $4000-5000 in another bank (pre-tax though)
3. Assuming I pay $300,000-400,000 in taxes (spread of .77 percent ~ $2600). Also, spread on delaying the actual cash outlay by another 30-45 days from the charge (.5%)
4. If I put all other non bonus category spend on it - maybe another $200,000 ~ $1400
5. Best case scenario, I come out slightly ahead given the rewards are not taxes.
If we ever get crazy low interest rate environment again, it would make sense.
Not limited to BofA, anything in a Merrill account also “counts” including an IRA.
Exactly
Basically everyone getting 2.6 has a brokerage account at Merrill. Obviously, sticking more than 100k in a .1 savings account is dumb.
And even if one does happen to have cash to park, it would be best to use Merrill Edge's Institutional Money Market funds which have some of the lowest expense ratios and highest yields available to consumers (significantly better than what you would get at Schwab and Fidelity).
Merrill Edge is the best kept secret to overcome many of Bank of America's deficiencies.
$100K can easily get 4% at say Ally savings, ($4K per year.) BAC pays next to nothing. But back when all interest bearing accounts were next to nothing, this made sense.
It is not limited to BofA or to savings accounts. Investment accounts with BofA or Merrill count too.
Need to know what interest rate BofA is offering on accounts to do a proper analysis. A quick Google search shows that's it's.....0.01%.
So for $100,000 you are giving up almost $3,000 a year (pre-tax) in interest. That's a lot of money just to hit that cash back tier.
This card made sense in a low interest rate environment but unless you're spending a ton of money on it I don't see how it works for most people.
Not limited to BofA, anything in a Merrill account also “counts”, including an IRA.
I've used the $100 airline incidental credit for:
* seat upgrades (AMEX airline credit doesn't cover, though they will sometimes comp a 1-time credit)
* United Airlines Travel Bank
And I've seen credible reports of the "cheap airfare" technique working. It's basically $100 cash every year (presuming you travel and ever need something besides a regular economy seat).