Most of the rumors about that U.S. Bank Smartly card changes which we discussed in the prior post turned out to be true. Instead of updating that post, let’s just review everything we know. This is based on internal U.S. Bank communication sent out today. (thanks to reddit user Zanutrees)
- No changes are happening at this time for existing U.S. Bank Smartly cardholders. (There was some mention of additional changes happening on 5/19/25, and it’s possible those will affect the existing cardholders, but we don’t know that and my guess is it won’t. That seems to revolve more around the monthly maintenance fee waive; we’ll see.) It’s likely that at some point down the line there will be changes for everyone, but we can hope it’ll last for a while.
- You can apply for the existing/old/better version of the Smartly card through April 13, 2025 and you’ll be grandfathered with all of the old rules and benefits. I can’t advise whether this makes sense or not as we don’t know how long the old benefits will last. I would say for someone who doesn’t find it too difficult and who values the 4% a good deal, it could make sense to sign up now and hope that it’ll last for a while.
- The first version is called internally by the bank reps as Smartly v1 and the upcoming/worse version is v1.1. They don’t use those words when talking to customers.
Here are the negative changes with the new/worse version of the card:
- Only checking balances count toward the reward tiers. Even savings balances do not count, and brokerage does not count either.
- You need $10k balance in checking to get to tier 1 (2.5% rewards). In the old/better version you only needed $5k.
- The new/worse version use a balance calculation based on a 30-day average balance of all qualifying accounts. The old/better version went with a 90-day average.
- The new/worse version has $10,000 spend limit per billing cycle on the increased rewards (4% or 3% or 2.5%); afterward it’s just a flat 2%. The old version has no limit to the increased reward tiers.
- The new/worse version now excludes tax payments, business-to-business purchases, insurance, education/tuition, third party bill payments and direct selling Gift Card online sites. These purchases will earn the base earn of 2% cash back. The old/better version does not have any of these exclusions.