2026.4 Update: Besides the $200 plus 6% cash back in the category of your choice for the first year offer provided by BoA itself, third party website Rakuten offers an additional $75 cashback. Note that if you choose to earn MR on Rakuten you may see $0 additional cashback, you need to choose to earn cashback on Rakuten. HT: DoC.
2025.6 Update: The new offer is $200 plus 6% cash back in the category of your choice for the first year. This is 3% more cashback in addition to the existing 3% cashback rate on category of your choice. The upper limit is the same $2,500 spending per quarter. Therefore, if you are a Platinum Honors member with +75% bonus, you will earn 3%*(1+75%)+3%=8.25% cashback rate! This is the best ever offer on this card.
2023.8 Update: Small improvement about 3% cashback categories: the gas category now includes EV charging; the online shopping category now includes cable, streaming, internet, and phone plan. HT: DoC.
Application Link
- BoA Customized Cash Rewards regular version via Rakuten. (Click here to sign up for Rakuten and earn $50)
- BoA Customized Cash Rewards for Students. Note: student version has the same benefits as the regular version except the sign-up bonus. We suggest students apply for student version, non-students apply for non-student version, as suggested by their names.
Benefits
- $200 offer: earn $200 after spending $1,000 in first 3 months. Note that you can only get this sign-up bonus if you apply online, you won’t get it if applying in branch. The highest offer on this card is $200.
- Earn 3% cash back in the category of your choice:
- online shopping + cable/streaming/internet/phone plan
- dining
- travel
- gas + EV charging
- drug stores
- home improvement/furnishings
I recommend you to choose the “online shopping” category because it covers a very broad range of purchases (see this official webpage about which merchants count). And earn 2% cash back at grocery stores and wholesale clubs (e.g. Sam’s Club). Earn 1% cash back on other purchases.
- BoA Preferred Rewards program: If you have checking/savings/brokerage account in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn additional cashback based on the amount of asset. Earn additional 25% rewards if you are in Gold tier ($20k or more in balance); 50% if Platinum tier ($50k or more in balance); 75% if Platinum Honors tier ($100k or more in balance).
- No credit history needed, as long as you have certain amount of deposit in Bank of America (BoA) Checking Account. If you have no credit history, you need to go to the branch to apply.
- No annual fee.
Disadvantages
- You’ll only earn 3% and 2% cash back on the first $2,500 in combined bonus categories each quarter, then earn 1%.
- It has foreign transaction fee, so it’s not a good choice outside the US.
Recommended Application Time
- You can get it even without SSN and with no credit history at all! We recommend you go to the branch in this situation.
- [New] 2/3/4 Rule: BoA will only approve you for at most: 2 cards per rolling 2 months; 3 cards per rolling 12 months; and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. Because their IT system hasn’t been fully updated yet, you may not get declined because of this rule. Instead, you may get approved at first, and then the account will be closed because of “approved in error”.
- [New] 24 month churn rule: This card will not be available to you if you currently have or have had the card in the preceding 24 month period.
Summary
The 3% cashback on online shopping is decent, because the range is very wide. The cap of 3% cashback is a bit small. However, it’s still worth applying if you have zero or very limited credit history. You have to go to a branch to apply if you do not have any credit history, note that you will not get any sign-up bonus applying in branch, but don’t care about the bonus for your first credit card. You could switch to other credit cards with better rewards once you have enough credit history.
Other Versions
There are several other versions of this card. The benefits are identical, but BoA treat them as separate products. Therefore if you are interested, you can apply for all of them as long as BoA 2/3/4 Rule is satisfied. Why you may want to get these cards? Apart from the sign up bonuses, you can also increase the 3% cashback limit by holding multiple of these cards.
Related Credit Cards
After Applying
- Click here to check BoA application status.
- BoA reconsideration backdoor number: 800-732-9194. It seems that the number is changing. Please inform us at once if it fails. The representatives here can get in touch with decision-makers directly.
Historical Offers Chart
Application Link
- BoA Customized Cash Rewards regular version via Rakuten. (Click here to sign up for Rakuten and earn $50)
- BoA Customized Cash Rewards for Students. Note: student version has the same benefits as the regular version except the sign-up bonus. We suggest students apply for student version, non-students apply for non-student version, as suggested by their names.
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