Discover announced today that they have made a permanent change to redemption on the Discover IT Miles card: card members can now redeem miles to offset gas and restaurant purchases in addition to travel purchases. This isn’t a huge deal since you could already take cash back and use it on whatever your heart desires, but some people will probably enjoy the simplicity of offsetting common charges.
As a reminder, Discover IT cardholders can redeem miles at a value of 1 cent each to offset certain travel purchases or can alternatively redeem miles for cash deposited into a bank account. The ability to redeem miles for cash makes other redemption options kind of redundant, but I’m sure that there are some cardholders who want the simplicity of charging all of their vacation purchases to a single card and then erasing it with their points.
Of course, I’d rather take the rewards as cash and then use a credit card that earns a good bonus on travel, gas, or dining to pay for my travel needs, reimbursing the expense by taking the Discover miles as cash and therefore earning valuable points on that spend. But, again, I’m sure that some people prefer to keep things simpler.
Note that the expanded redemption options can be applied to purchases on or after June 9, 2020.
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