Rakuten announced today their new credit card which card runs on the American Express network and is issued by the fintech Imprint and their banking partner First Electronic Bank.
- Direct card link
- No annual fee
- $25 signup bonus spending $500 within 90 days
- Looks like there is no foreign transaction fee
- Card earnings:
- Earn an extra 4% cash back on top of what you already earn while shopping on Rakuten’s platform of more than 3,500 stores (in-store or online). This is limited to the first $7,000 of credit card spending each calendar year. Afterwards 1%.
- Earn an extra 5% cash back on top of the 5% you can earn with Rakuten Dining at more than 22,000 partner restaurants. That’s a total of 10% cash back on Rakuten Dining.
- Earn 2% cash back on Grocery and Restaurants.
- Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases.
The move comes years after discontinuing their Synchrony Bank issued credit card which earned 3% back on Rakuten merchants with no limit.
Our Verdict
The 4% for online shopping is nice, but given the $7,000 limit I don’t see major value there. I’m not sure how useful the Rakuten Dining program is and how it compares to other similar programs. That could be something to look into.
A positive factor to consider is that the ‘cashback’ apparently pools with your Rakuten balance. And so, if you have your Rakuten set to Membership Rewards points, you’ll get those as points which some value significantly more Update: Rakuten reached out and stated that only cashback earned from the portal is eligible to convert to Membership Rewards and cashback on this card is not convertible. Update 2: Rakuten reached out again this time to backtrack and say the points actually are convertible to Membership Rewards points.
I suppose there can be some people for whom this card can make sense. It’s probably more of an edge case since it would mainly be for someone who does a lot of Rakuten Shopping and uses Rakuten Dining a lot.
