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A Look at Wells Fargo’s Check Card Rewards Program
By JLP | April 6, 2006
You may or may not know this but banks make more money off credit transactions than off debit transactions. The flipside is that retailers make more off debit transactions than credit transactions. Therefore, banks are coming up with “rewards” programs in order to encourage people to “sign” for their transactions. Today I’m going to look at Wells Fargo’s Rewards Program.
Wells Fargo has two rewards programs: Exclusive Rewards® and Enhanced Rewards. You can compare both side-by-side here. To keep things simple, I’ll only be discussing the Exclusive Rewards® program.
The Exclusive Rewards® program has a $12 annual fee unless you have a Portfolio Management Account (PMA) which requires a minimum of $25,000 combined banking, credit, or investment balance (they will also let you count 10% of your outstanding home mortgage balance). Why do they charge an annual fee? I have no idea.
What do you get for your fee?
For every $4 you spend, you get 1 point. The minimum required point level to qualify for the base reward (a $5 gift card) is 650 points (take a look at the Program Guide (PDF)). That means you have to sign for $2600 (650 X $4 = $2,600) to get back $5. Remember, these have to be SIGNED transactions, not debit transactions. Since my wife and I don’t have a PMA account with WF, we would have to spend over $6,240 BEFORE we would breakeven on the $12 annual fee. To top it off, you get back gift cards, not actual money.
I love how banks make these programs so confusing. I’m sure they do it on purpose. Next time, I’ll look at Citibank’s reward card. It’s a little better than this, but not much.
Topics: Credit Cards | 9 Comments »
April 6th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Bank of America has a GM rewards debit card. It is the same idea. They make you sign for transactions instead of using your pin number, and then for ever few dollars, you gain a point towards money off of a new GM car. We signed up for it because it was totally free to have, so why not. However, I don’t ever plan on it being a benefit to me. I am not a big GM fan, and I never buy new cars. But this is a card that is actually totally free (for now) and it could help someone get about a $2 – 3 grand down payment on a car.
April 9th, 2006 at 12:13 am
[...] JLP gives Wells Fargo’s Check Card Rewards program a look and writes down his thoughts. [...]
April 9th, 2006 at 1:31 am
I don’t see if there is any advantage in using signature debit cards i.e. cards with Visa/MasterCard logo which allows you to sign instead of entering your PIN number. Just yesterday I wrote a post about it:
http://cashorcharge.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-i-dont-want-signature-debit-cards.html
April 10th, 2006 at 1:13 am
[...] JLP exploreed Wells Fargo’s Check Card Reward Program on AllFinancialMatters. [...]
April 11th, 2006 at 6:21 am
[...] A Look at Wells Fargo’s Check Card Rewards Program: AllFinancialMatters checks out Wells Fargo’s Rewards Program. [...]
April 19th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Discover card gives unlimited cash back on everything that you buy with no caps and will double it with some vendors to give you for example a 40 gift card for Sharper Image or Enterprise Rent a Car instead of just taking 20 in cash or credit on your account.
April 24th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Wells Fargo’s Check Card
You may or may not know this but banks make more money off credit transactions than off debit transactions. The flipside is that retailers make more off debit transactions than credit transactions. Therefore, banks are coming up with “rewards” progra…
June 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Coulee Bank ( http://www.couleebank.net ) offers an incredible 6.01% APY with their Rewards Checking account. The rate is easy to earn. All you have to do is make 10 check card transactions a month, use e-statements, and do 1 automatic payment a month (they call it ACH). Coulee Bank pays 6.01% on the first $25,000 and 1.01% on anything above that. The best thing about this account besides the rate is it is FREE, you can apply online, and it is from a great bank with real people that answer the phone. And as they like to say, Banking Green has its Rewards. The Rewards Checking account saves paper and preserves our natural resources. No wonder I feel good about recommending this to everyone I know. Check it out. I guarantee you will love it.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:46 am
After a year I only got 35.00 dlls Gift Card….