November 13, 2024: Yesterday, U.S. Bank officially launched its new Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card. The card promises up to 4% cash back everywhere with no limits and no annual fee if you have over $100,000 in assets held with U.S. Bank.
The extreme amount of cash back you can earn everywhere makes this card incredibly attractive, but we have yet to know if the card offers essential consumer benefits like consumer protection and purchase protection.
If the card offers those benefits, the Smartly Visa could be the best credit card of 2024.
Here’s what we know about the Smartly Visa.
U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card at a glance
Annual fee: $0
Requires $100,000 of investments with U.S. Bank to earn the best rewards. Most investment accounts have a $50 annual account maintenance fee.
All information about the U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card has been collected independently by cardsandpoints.com.
The U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card is a new offering that promises up to 4% cash back for customers who hold over $100,000 of assets with U.S. Bank.
Sign-up bonus
U.S. Bank is not offering a sign-up bonus on the Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card at this time.
Rewards
Unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase.
Up to an additional 2% cash back if you have a U.S. Bank Smartly® Savings account and hold a significant amount of deposits with U.S. Bank. Qualifying deposits include balances in U.S. Bank deposit, trust, and investment accounts.
- Earn a total of 2.5% with a qualifying balance between $5,000 and $49,999.
- Earn a total of 3% with a qualifying balance between $50,000 and $99,999.
- Earn a total of 4% with a qualifying balance of $100,000 or more.
Rewards are earned as points which must be redeemed as a credit into an eligible U.S. Bank deposit account if you want to get the full amount of cash back.
Benefits
The U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card does not advertise any significant benefits beyond its cash back. We are working on confirming with U.S. Bank whether the card offers any additional benefits like extended warranty or purchase protection.
Our take: Amazing cash back, but lots of hoops and uncertain benefits
The ability to get unlimited 4% cash back everywhere with the U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card is exciting and the card is definitely worth a second look. Unfortunately, the currently limited information about the card’s benefits and the investment options available at U.S. Bank make us hesitant to say that this card is the best card of 2024… but it certainly could be.
How the Smartly Visa compares to other cards
The most obvious comparisons to the Smartly Visa are the 2.62% everywhere you can get with the Bank of America® Unlimited Cash Rewards credit card and Platinum Honors status in the Preferred Rewards program and the 3% cash back or 4.5% travel rewards you could get with the (now discontinued) U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card.
From a cash back perspective, the new U.S. Bank card beats both. Even if you’re redeeming your Altitude Reserve points for travel and getting 4.5% rewards out of them, I’d prefer to have 4% cash back any way. As I’m a fan of saying, cash back is the most flexible point.
But what made the other options so great is that they combined excellent rewards with valuable consumer insurance benefits like extended warranty and purchase protection. And in the case of the Altitude Reserve, the inclusion of a handful of Priority Pass lounge visits made the card an easy win for the occasional traveler.
How to get maximum cash back: Lots of hoops to jump through.
In my view, the Smartly Visa is really only worth getting if you’re able and willing to move enough assets to U.S. Bank to get at least 2.5% cash back everywhere. Fortunately, that rewards tier only requires having $5,000 with the bank, but if you can move $100,000 or more to the bank, that’s how you’ll get access top 4% cash back rewards.
At a minimum, here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Open a U.S. Bank Smartly® Savings account. This is a requirement to get increased rewards.
- Open a U.S. Bank Smartly® Checking account. If you want to waive the monthly fee on the savings account, you’ll need a checking account with U.S. Bank as well.
- Open a U.S. Bank investment account. Most likely, you’re not going to be keeping tens of thousands of dollars in your U.S. Bank checking and savings accounts, so you’ll want to open an investment account with U.S. Bank.
- Bring investment assets over to U.S. Bank. Bringing investment or retirement account assets over to U.S. Bank is how most people are likely get get a large amount of qualifying balances.
- Pay at least $50 account maintenance fee on your investment account. U.S. Bank offers a number of more-costly wealth management services that charge higher fees, but if you want a self-directed brokerage account, you’ll end up paying at least a $50 account maintenance fee.
That’s…. a lot. Sure, the whole point of the card (for U.S. Bank) is to entice customers to bring a large chunk of their assets to the bank, but they could do that without requiring you to open a checking or savings account. In my view, if you’re willing to bring $100,000 of investment assets to the bank, that should be sufficient.
Redeeming rewards: One important detail that is buried in the terms and conditions.
When I dug through the terms and conditions of the card, I found one small detail about redeeming rewards that’s easy to miss:
This card earns cash back rewards in the form of Points. To redeem as Cash Back in the values noted in this advertisement, Points can be redeemed as a deposit into an eligible U.S. Bank deposit account. Other redemptions, such as for statement credits and gift cards, may be at a reduced redemption rate.
U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card terms and conditions
In order to get full value for your points, you must redeem them for cash back deposited into your U.S. Bank account. Sure, you’ll have a U.S. Bank account anyway if you’re going all-in on the Smartly Visa, but offering less value for points when you redeem them as a statement credit to the card adds unnecessary complexity to the card.
Maybe U.S. Bank is hoping for breakage from cardmembers who don’t notice that they’re getting less value from their points when redeeming them as a statement credit? This strikes me as particularly consumer-unfriendly.
Sign-up bonus: Nada. Zilch. None.
The U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card doesn’t offer a sign-up bonus for new cardmembers. Given the value that you can get over the course of the year from the card’s rewards, I am not too concerned about this.
Benefits: The big question mark
As of the date we published this guide, U.S. Bank had not released any information about the benefits of the Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card. U.S. Bank’s guides to benefits are available on its website if you know where to look. But the benefit guide for this card simply isn’t posted.
It is possible that the card could have no benefits of note. If it did, that would be shocking for a card meant for high-value customers who are willing to bring $100,000 to the bank.
I would expect that this card would carry basic benefits like extended warranty and purchase protection. But we simply don’t know—maybe U.S. Bank is banking on the cash back rewards being enough.
We’ve reached out to a U.S. Bank representative for comment and will update this post if they provide more clarity on that.
YouTube: Getting 4% cash back everywhere with the Smartly Visa
Here’s what we said about the card on YouTube.
Bottom line: A card with up to 4% cash back rewards, but we need to know more.
The U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature® Card offers up to 4% cash back rewards to customers who are willing to bring $100,000 of assets to the bank. The card is interesting, but the lack of public information about benefits means we’re still trying to figure out whether this card is merely interesting or the best card of 2024.
