The latest credit card & travel loyalty stories from us and other sites of interest:

The Very Latest:

• Last Day for 100K on Marriott Credit Cards – Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express ($450 annual fee) and Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express ($125 annual fee) offering 100,000-point bonus opportunities for just a few more hours. (April 24)
• INCREASED POINTS OPPORTUNITY FOR WELLS FARGO CARDHOLDERS: 5 extra rewards points per dollar on in-store Office Depot / OfficeMax purchases for limited time. (April 23)
• Comenity Bank (Alliance Data) to Issue Burlington Store Credit Card – New credit card coming from the former Burlington Coat Factory that is now an off-price retailer. Via PR Newswire. (April 23)

Still New & Exciting:

• Venmo Credit Card On Its Way – Shooting for a 2019 rollout, according to the Wall Street Journal. (April 19)
• New T-Mobile Checking Account Offers Customers 4% — But There’s A Catch – Must be a T-Mobile customer and deposit at least $200 per month and the 4% is only on the first $3K in your account. (April 18)
• Sephora Credit Card Now Available Online: Our Review – Worth of the card depends on how obsessed you are with Sephora. (April 16)
• Mastercard Adds Cell Phone Insurance, Lyft Credits and More to World & World Elite Credit Cards – These benefits may be easier to understand than some of the existing “World” card features. (April 16)
• Barclays Launches “Control Your Card” Digital Features to Give Cardmembers More Control Over Credit Card Usage – Remote credit card locking, spending limit controls, etc. Via PR Newswire. (April 16)
• ALTERNATE CREDIT CARD BONUS: Marriott Bonvoy Boundless – $200 statement credit after first purchase + 2 free Marriott nights if $3000 spend in three months + Annual fee waived in first year. (Compares to regular offer of 100,000 points if $5000 spend in three months & no first-year fee waiver.) Hat tip: Doctor of Credit. (April 15)
• Airport Lounge Development Announces the Opening of New Lounge at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport Terminal 1 – Open to anyone for a $40 day pass, or you can use Priority Pass, Lounge Pass, Lounge Key. Via Business Wire. (April 11)

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Today is the last day to score a 100,000-point bonus from Marriott when you apply and are approved for one of two Marriott American Express Cards:

• The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card for consumers offers a 100,000-point bonus if you spend at least $5000 with the card in the first three months of having it. This $450 annual fee card offers plenty of point-earning opportunities and travel extras.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Wells Fargo is now offering 5 extra rewards points per dollar on purchases inside Office Depot and OfficeMax stores for Wells Fargo cardholders who use their rewards credit cards when making the purchase. Note that this is only for in-store purchases, not online. The offer expires May 22, 2019.

Office Depot/OfficeMax generally offers only 2 extra points per dollar via the Wells Fargo “Earn More Mall”. The points you earn via this offer are on top of any “Go Far” rewards points you would normally earn for your purchases based on the rewards formula of your Wells Fargo credit card.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

The popular money-sharing app Venmo is hoping to roll out a credit card later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The PayPal-owned company is likely to partner with Synchrony Bank, which issues other PayPal credit cards including the PayPal Cashback Mastercard and the PayPal Extras Mastercard.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

T-Mobile announced today a new checking account that will pay certain T-Mobile customers a 4% interest rate — but like most checking accounts offering unusually high rates, there’s a catch.

What It Offers

T-Mobile Money (they want us to spell it T-Mobile MONEY, but we’re not giving them the all-caps treatment) will offer a 4% APY (Annual Percentage Yield, which essentially means the interest rate) on balances up to $3000 — for T-Mobile post-paid customers only. However, to get that rate, T-Mobile customers must also deposit at least $200 per month into the T-Mobile checking account. Banks often give out these types of teaser rates combined with a deposit requirement in order to incentivize customers to make that checking account their main money account.

Balances over $3000 will only get a 1% rate.

T-Mobile is also promising no fees — no monthly fees, no overdraft fees (as long as not over $50), no fees at ATMs within the Allpoint network. (Out-of-network ATM usage may include a separate fee from the bank that owns the ATM.) The account comes with a Mastercard debit card to access account funds.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Mastercard has announced some interesting new benefits that might add extra meaning for potential Mastercard World & World Elite cardholders. If the “World” and “World Elite” names have mostly seemed like marketing jargon in the past, these new, concrete benefits could make cards with these designations more desirable.

Specifically, the following discounts and benefits are coming to all “World Elite” Mastercard credit cards, while “World” Mastercards will get only those specifically mentioned below:

• Cell Phone Insurance: World and World Elite cardholders will be eligible for Mastercard Cellular Telephone Protection when they charge their monthly telephone bill to their World or World Elite Mastercard. This benefit—with a maximum liability of $600 per claim for World cardholders and $800 for World Elite cardholders—covers stolen or damaged mobile phones as well as cosmetic screen scratches even if they don’t affect the ability to make or take a call. Cardholders simply have to submit a claim if they incur a loss, up to $1,000 per year.
• Lyft: If World Elite cardholders ride with Lyft at least 5 times in a calendar month, they will receive a $10 credit, which will be automatically applied to the next ride.
• Fandango: World Elite cardholders will earn double Fandango VIP+ points for the movie tickets they buy. Cardholders will get 500 Fandango VIP+ points (worth $5) for every two movie tickets they purchase via the Fandango app or Fandango.com, which can be used towards purchasing movie tickets on Fandango or towards streaming movies and TV shows on FandangoNOW.
• Postmates: World and World Elite cardholders will receive $5 off every order of $25 or more.
• Boxed: World Elite cardholders will earn 5% in rewards on their Boxed purchases, which can be used towards future purchases on Boxed.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Beauty megastore Sephora now offers a rewards credit card that might be right for Sephora acolytes, but doesn’t measure up as an everyday credit card for the casual fan.

How It Works

When you apply for the Sephora credit card, you are actually agreeing to be considered for one of two cards:

1. The Sephora Visa, which can used at Sephora and anywhere else Visa is accepted
2. The Sephora Credit Card, which is accepted only at Sephora

You don’t choose which card you’ll get. Instead, Comenity Capital Bank, the bank that actually issues the card, will first consider you for the Sephora Visa. If your credit history is not strong enough to qualify, you’ll then be considered for the store-only Sephora credit card. In our view, this doesn’t matter much because using this card outside Sephora doesn’t make a lot of sense. (More on that in a moment.)

Rewards on Purchases

Let’s start with the card’s basic rewards, since that’s what you probably came for. Here’s what the Sephora credit card offers:

• 4% (given as 4 points per dollar) on Sephora purchases made with the card
• 1% (given as 1 point per dollar) on purchases made with the Sephora Visa (if you qualify for the Visa)

For every 125 points (called Rewards Dollars in the program), you’ll get a $5 reward that you can use toward a future Sephora purchase.

Other Goodies

• 15% Off First Purchase (if card used immediately): The Sephora credit card offers the possibility of instant approval. If you are approved instantly and use the card for a Sephora purchase on the day of approval, you’ll get 15% off of the purchase.
• $20 Rewards Bonus Opportunity: You can earn $20 in Sephora rewards if you are approved for the Sephora Visa and use it to spend at least $500 outside of Sephora within 90 days of getting the card. This equates to a 4% reward on that $500 spent, where the card usually only gives a 1% reward on purchases outside of Sephora.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

If you have the NFL credit card from Barclays Bank, you can receive an extra 1000 points in April and/or May if you spend at least $1000 with your card in that particular month. I received this offer via email, but it doesn’t seem to be targeted or require any signup — just do the spending to get the points.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

American Express and Delta Airlines announced a renewal of their long-running credit card partnership this morning, but somewhat buried in that announcement is the fact that the partnership is getting way more expensive for Amex.

The new agreement extends the partnership through 2029, but definitely not at the same costs to American Express. From the press release:

“As the two companies work together, Delta expects its benefit from the relationship to double to nearly $7 billion annually by 2023, up from $3.4 billion in 2018, strengthening Delta’s increasingly diversified revenue stream.

“American Express expects attractive growth economics over the term of the agreement and affirmed its previous guidance for 2019 of FX-adjusted revenue growth in the 8-10 percent range and adjusted earnings per share between $7.85 and $8.35, subject to any contingencies and legal settlements¹. The economics of the new terms are not expected to have a material effect on the first quarter results of American Express.”

Reading between the lines, it appears that in four years American Express will be paying more than double the money it now pays Delta for the privilege of dishing out Delta miles and airport lounge access to its SkyMiles credit card holders. And when American Express talks about “attractive growth economics,” you might want to interpret that as “We hope this works out because we may have totally overpaid.”

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

My kids are nearing the end of high school, and recently we’ve been searching for data about various colleges to see how the schools stack up, which colleges are toughest to be accepted into, and which colleges are likely (or unlikely) to accept our kids (though they all should be begging to have them 😃😃).

This information is not always easy to find. So for the past couple of months we’ve been combing through the numbers contained in a couple of different databases to get a clearer picture of the college landscape. One piece of data that we’ve found especially useful is the ACT scores of recently-admitted students to each school. The data is generally presented as a range, with the first number showing the ACT scores at the 25th percentile of the freshman class, and the second number showing the ACT scores at the 75th percentile.

For example, Baylor University has an ACT score range of 26-31 (based on the most recently-available stats). This means that roughly 50% of the freshman students at Baylor scored between a 26 and 31 on their ACT tests. Further, it shows that about 25% scored over a 31 on the test, while about 25% scored below a 26 on the test.

We’ve now mined that all of that ACT data and put it into one document showing ACT scores from over 1200 U.S. colleges and universities. (Technically, it’s split up into more than one document, but it’s constructed to help you easily find the ACT score ranges from a boatload of schools.)