A couple of months ago, Greg wrote about a rumored new prepaid debit card: The United MileagePlus GO Prepaid Visa Debit Card. We wondered whether this new card would provide a new avenue for MS via mileage-earning PIN transactions. The verdict is in: this card won’t earn miles on PIN-based transactions and isn’t worth the fee for the vast majority of people.
The Deal
- United prepaid debit card that earns 1X per dollar spent with a monthly cap of 2,500 miles per month
- Annual fee of $85
- Find more information at https://www.mileageplusgo.com/
Key Details
- $85 annual fee (double-emphasizing this)
- No credit check
- Earn 1X everywhere with a monthly cap of 2,500 miles per month
- Only signature-based transactions earn miles
- $0 direct deposit load fee, load fees at stores will vary
- Mobile account management
- Replacement card costs $9.95
- Additional card costs $9.95
- Bill payment fees vary
- There are even more fees
Quick Thoughts
They should either rename this one the United MileagePlus Lots of Fees card or the United MileagePlus Go Far Away card. For most people, this card just won’t make sense. An annual fee for a prepaid debit card would only make sense if you do not have access to a rewards credit card. For those without sufficient credit to get approved for a rewards-earning credit card — whether due to age or financial history — perhaps this card could make sense. However, I might suggest that a secured credit card from an issuer that allows that card to graduate to an unsecured card might be more productive in building a credit history.
According to our Reasonable Redemption Values, United miles are worth about 1.4 cents per point. That means that in order to cover the annual fee, you would have to earn more than 6,071 miles per year — meaning that the better part of your first three months in earnings will be going to cover the fee. If you then also pay any of the rest of the myriad of fees, you would have to earn more miles to cover those fees as well. That said, if you don’t have access to a credit card and want to earn something for your purchases, this might be a way to do that. Just be sure to watch out for the fees – the full list of which can be seen here.
All that said, there is still a slight possibility of this turning out better-than-anticipated if PIN-less debit transactions work with the card (see the previous post for more detail). We won’t know the answer to this question for a while. Still, it would seem that fees for loading combined with the annual fee might make this avenue too expensive for buying and unloading prepaid cards. See the full MileagePlus Go website for more detail.
H/T: Points Fitness
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[…] had confirmation this week of some things we have long suspected: the United Mileage Plus Lots of Fees prepaid debit card is launching and isn’t terribly useful (though maybe not useless), FlexPerks are going to […]
with 5% APY (4.91% APR) on the first $1000, you get $49.10 back by just parking $1000 there. A little back to ease the pain on AF. But I don’t understand what is the benefit we get for the Annual Fee which is equivalent to that of an Explorer Credit card which has much more benefits including expanded award availability, Free Checked luggage and Primary car rental etc.,
Would this make sense as a card to earn miles paying quarterly taxes. I just paid almost $80 in fees for Q2 on a mileage earning card. The fee for debit cards is $2.65. If you aren’t using the tax payments to meet a signup bonus I can see a reason why this card could have some value.
That’s the idea I linked to in the last paragraph. Time will tell. You could be right, in which case that would be the most interesting use of this card.
[…] positive side it does earn 1:1 and it also has the 5% APY account attached to it. And Frequentmiler points out that it might earn points on PIN-less debit […]
Will this card give access to expanded award availability?
I don’t know for sure, but I would seriously doubt it. That would be a benefit I imagine they would be marketing near the top of the list of benefits if that were the case. As that is a benefit of the Chase cards and I do not believe this card is backed by Chase, I don’t *think* there will be access to expanded award availability.
I really appreciate your using titles that sum up the whole article as opposed to clickbait certain other bloggers employ.