New United debit card is now available for applications with bonus of 10K miles

A couple of weeks ago we learned that United was planning on joining Wyndham and Southwest in launching their own debit card.

The United MileagePlus® Debit Rewards Card is now live for applications and has a welcome offer awarding 10,000 bonus miles after qualifying activity. That bonus is about the only highlight of the card though.

United Debit Card Features

You can apply for the United debit card here. Here’s a full list of the card’s features:

Earning rates

• 1 mile per $1 on United purchases
• 1 mile per $2 on all other purchases

Sign-up bonus

• 10,000 bonus MileagePlus miles after spending $500 within the first four months

Other features

• Annual spend bonus
  • Earn 2,500 bonus miles after spending $10,000 each anniversary year (i.e. cardmember year rather than calendar year)
• Balance bonus
  • Earn bonus miles based on the average daily balance in your account each calendar month. You’ll earn a pro-rated portion of the annualized bonus miles each month, equal to 1/12 of the annualized amount:
    • $2,500-$4,999.99 = 2,500 bonus miles
    • $5,000-$9,999.99 = 5,000 bonus miles
    • $10,000-$24,999.99 = 15,000 bonus miles
    • $25,000-$49,999.99 = 30,000 bonus miles
    • $50,000+ = 70,000 bonus miles
• Monthly fee
  • $4 per month, waived if your average account balance is at least $2,000

Quick Thoughts

I was pleasantly surprised by Southwest’s debit card when it launched last week as it had a number of thoughtful features that could make it a good choice for the right person, including the ability to earn Companion Pass-qualifying points.

United’s debit card on the other hand is underwhelming. It gives the opportunity to earn MileagePlus miles without getting a credit card, but earning only 1x on United flights and 0.5x on all other spending gives minimal incentive to both get and use the card.

The opportunity to earn bonus miles based on the money you have in your account offers very poor value compared to the interest you’d be forgoing by not putting that money in some kind of savings account with a good earning rate. The best return for this feature is depositing $10,000 to get 15,000 bonus miles, so an effective 1.5 bonus miles per dollar. That’s a steep price to pay considering your cash will encounter inflation, while the miles you earn will encounter devaluations.

Unless you can generate a lot of debit card spending at little-to-no cost which isn’t possible with credit cards for one reason or another, the signup bonus from this debit card is pretty much the only incentive for getting it. At least the requirements for that are easy as you only need to spend $500 within the first four months of opening your United debit card account in order to earn 10,000 bonus miles.

I was curious as to what the situation will be for United debit card holders with regards to ATM fees. When the Southwest card launched, it highlighted that there’d be no ATM fees when using the Cirrus network. The United debit card landing page on the other hand made no references to ATM fees.

Thankfully that doesn’t mean you can’t avoid them. Rather than using the Cirrus network, you can avoid ATM fees by using the Allpoint network. There are apparently 40,000 of those ATMs around the US, so hopefully that makes it easy enough to find one no matter where you are if you do end up applying for this card.

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