Point is a neobank offering a cash back debit card (and checking account technically called Premium Checking). The card charges a $99/y AF (formerly $49/y). Here I will break down the benefits of the card, how I use it, the rewards I get out of it, the quirks involved and my recommendation on whether it’s worth it or not

DoC Page

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Rewards

Cash Back

They offer

• 5x points on subscriptions
• 3x points on food delivery & rideshare
• 1x points on all other purchases

All points are redeemable at 1cpp

They also offer “Access” offers that can increase these base rewards for certain merchants which I will discuss further down

Benefits

They also offer card benefits similar to some AF credit cards such as

• Phone insurance
• New purchase insurance
• Extended warranty
• Trip cancellation insurance
• Travel accident insurance
• Global travel assistance
• Car rental insurance
• Rideshare protection
• Event ticket protection
• Virtual PointCard number
• Zero liability coverage
• 2 free ATM withdrawals per month
• Unlimited quick bank transfers
• Deposit insurance
• No international travel fees

Definitely look at the fine print for these additional benefits but some seem to be actually useful. I have not used any of them

Access

Cash Back

This is where I get all of the benefits from this card. For a running history of most of the offers they have given in the past, check the DoC page they have for this card

Some notable frequently offered boosts include 5x at Costco, Amazon, Whole Foods and BestBuy. Some less frequent but great offers have been 20x at major airlines (only offered for a few days), 10x at Target, 10x at cellphone carriers and a few others. To see all the offers I have used, see the Value section

Streaks

Point also offers things they call Streaks. Often it will be something along the lines of make a purchase every day for 5 days straight, totaling $50, for a reward of 1000 points ($10) in addition to any points you get for the purchases. These have difficulties tracking in my experience and I don’t do often (skip to Quirks section for more info)

DD Bonus

This is a short term one they recently introduced from March to the end of May. They will give you 1% of any employer DD you deposit to the account as points, up to $50/m. To qualify you must spend $100 on the card in that month. Thankfully the boosts they have recently have made it easy for me to meet this. And yes in my experience it has to be a real DD. Check the DoC comments for more DPs

Value

I have been tracking the value I have sucked out of this card in a spreadsheet to determine if I will renew it once my first year is up. I have included an embedded version of that below. I take the spend I earn and calculate the total points I got for the reward. Then I subtract how much I would have gotten for that purchase using one of my other cards to find the actual value added. Thus far I have definitely made enough back to make it worth it for me but obviously YMMV

Quirks

This sounds awesome, so what’s the catch? Of course Point comes with some. In their case, it’s their customer service and the fact that some points do not post properly

Missing Points

Frequently enough (maybe once a month in my experience), some access offer doesn’t give me the full points I should have earned. What makes this difficult is some of their access boosts post the extra points immediately upon purchase while others post the next month. I think they are moving to the instant point awarding system but it is still a mixed bag

On top of the missing access points for purchases, very frequently, streak bonuses will not track so you will not be credited the points

In both of the cases above, you will need to contact support to get them to manually add the points for you. Simple enough right?

Horrible Customer Service

Nope lol

Point seems to be either severely underfunding their CS department, is genuinely overwhelmed with CS requests, just doesn’t care, or some combination of the above. Their CS takes unbelievably long to get back to you. And by unbelievably long I mean on the timeframe of a few days to a few weeks. Often when I reach out to them I get a blanket like the following before they eventually get back to me with an answer:

We haven't forgotten about you and sincerely apologize that we have not followed up regarding your request. We are experiencing an unexpectedly high volume of contacts and our Member Services team is working around the clock to reply back to our members as soon as we can. We appreciate your patience and we will be in touch soon.

Personally, if I am going to have to frequently reach out to CS to get $10 or less in rewards, it teeters on not even being worth it. IMO It’s ridiculous that their rewards straight up just don’t post sometimes and they take so long to respond. Maybe it is intentional so you just leave it be and forego the awards, who knows. If the points would just post I would never have to bug support!

Is it worth it?

If you can avoid having to deal with CS often and are ok with checking another app to see if it has a good offer for your purchase/you frequently use their most common access boost merchants, I say give it a shot! They usually have a $100 SUB which pays for the first AF so you don’t have much to lose except opportunity cost

Reach out to me if you want a referral link but they frequently change their SUB offerings so check their site or ask me to see what it currently is!