Discover has just unveiled a new credit card: Discover It Miles.
While this card earns “miles” it appears to really be indistinguishable from a cash back card. Points are redeemable for travel expenses or for cash back at a rate of 1 cent per point.
Overall, this card is very similar to the Bank of America Travel Rewards card. Both cards earn 1.5 “miles” per dollar. Both have no annual fee. And, both have no foreign transaction fees. Where they differ greatly is in the way consumers can do better than 1.5 miles (AKA 1.5% cash back) per dollar. For details about maximizing the BOA Travel Rewards card, please see this post.
The Discover It Miles card distinguishes itself in a couple of ways. For one, the card will reimburse cardholders up to $30 for in-flight wifi per year. That’s a nice little perk for a no-fee card. Secondly, the first year bonus is potentially incredible…
The Discover It Miles card offers to double your miles earned at the end of your first year. That means you’ll average 3 points per dollar, or 3% cash back, for all spend. That will easily catapult this card to the top of my “Best rewards for everyday spend” page. But it gets better…
Let’s look at the terms of the double miles offer:
After the first 12 consecutive billing periods that your new account is open, we will double all the Miles you’ve earned and apply them to your account in the next billing cycle. You will not receive Double Miles if your account is closed or is no longer in the Miles reward program as of the award date. This promotional offer may end. This promotional offer may not be offered in the future. See Rewards Terms and Conditions for additional details on earning and redeeming Miles.
The key term is that they “will double all the Miles you’ve earned…” I haven’t received confirmation from Discover about this yet, but I believe that means that points earned through Discover Deals will also be doubled! Discover Deals is already my go to portal / savings engine for a vast number of opportunities. Can you imagine how lucrative it could become if all points earned were doubled at the end of the year?
How do we know that Discover Deals will be available for this product? Click here for the “Miles rewards terms & conditions”. There, you’ll find the following paragraph:
Discover DealsSM Purchases
With Discover DealsSM you can shop at top merchants and earn additional Miles, a statement credit on your Discover account or instant savings at checkout both online and in stores. Miles will take approximately 8 weeks to show up on your account, statement credits will take approximately 14 days, and instant savings immediately reduce your amount due at the merchants point of sale.
More information about the Discover It Miles card can be found here.
Questions remaining to be answered:
- Will Discover really double all points earned including those earned through Discover Deals? Note: Please see an update here: Discover It Miles not as lucrative as I had hoped.
- What about current Discover It cardholders? Can they sign up for this card too or do they have to choose one or another?
- Will customers have the ability to redeem points for merchant gift cards the way they can currently with Discover It cash back?
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Any further news on this? Thanks!
Yep. See this post for a followup: https://frequentmiler.com/2015/04/20/discover-it-miles-not-as-lucrative-as-i-had-hoped/
[…] This means that the card effectively earns 3% cash back for the first year. For more, see: Discover introduces a new card and a potentially VERY lucrative 1st year offer. After the first year, the card offers a respectable, but far from best-in-class, 1.5% cash […]
[…] Discover introduces a new card and a potentially VERY lucrative 1st year offer – Analysis of Discover’s new travel focused card and how the 3X everywhere first year return may be more generous than in looks. […]
Do you think this card will work for Serve/SoftServe online loads?
I would expect so
lol MMS took my comment off….it explained my disbelief that Discover would offer the same redemption value of 1 cent pp for cashback. As with BOA, Arrival, and Venture travel mile cards call for redemptions at .5cpp and only offer full value against travel related expenses, within a few month timeframe, either by statement credit (or refund to your bank account, if charge has been paid)…if it were truly a 1st year 3% card they would advertise it as such and kill the competition. why convolute it with miles and limited time/category redemptions?!? I think it is a poorly worded intro and they leave all kinds of room to pull the rug out and adjust the terms as needed with FM’s mentioned T&C….at best it will be a competitor to the aforementioned cards if they include other discovercard network perks…I seriously doubt it will turn out to be a true 3% CB card.
I was wanting to get a Discover It card so I got this card today instead. Thanks, Greg!
I already have a Discover (the original) card so they asked me to decide how I wanted to split my credit line between the two cards ($15k). The rep did not know anything about how Discover Deals would be handled and said since this was the first day of offering this new product, they were all learning (and a bit overwhelmed).
[…] Discover is not yet allowing doing a product change from the Cash Back card to the miles card (1, 2). [We’re not discussing the wisdom of doing such a product change, just whether it’s […]
The main question I think needs answering is how the Miles card fits in with Discover Deals? For example, Apple Store is 5% cash back via DD. So if I don’t have the regular IT card and go through DD portal to buy an iPad, will I get 5x “miles”, or just 5% cash back? Right now when I log on to my Discover account, they separate the cash back earned via CC from the cash back earned via DD. My guess is that they’ll do the same if you have the Miles card. We’re all hoping that Discover will double the DD earnings at the end of the year (5 “miles” from DD + 1.5 from CC, doubled to 13 “miles”), but I think that’s highly unlikely. More realistically, buying an iPad will get 5% cash back and 1.5 “miles” that doubles to 3 “miles” after 12 months.
I just got the Discover IT card a few weeks ago, mostly to gain access to Discover Deals. Sounds like I applied too early. I’m going to call tomorrow morning to see if I can convert. I’m really not interested in applying for another card at this point. However, I highly doubt they’ll honor doubling DD “miles” earned, especially since this is an end of year thing. DD already offers some of the best payouts around. For example, I just cashed in on 15% on Saks purchases. And of course Apple Store is at 5%. I just don’t see how they can sustain that.
This might be a good everyday card, but I’d be very nervous of waiting the whole year hoping that they will send me a $20,000 check or something instead of just shutting me down. I wonder if there is a benefit to starting your 1 year period on the early side.
After the Amex beatdown people should be wary of having to wait an entire year for bonus points if they plan on doing MS on this card.