Alliant Visa Platinum Rewards Card Review

2021.2 Update : The points are worth 1 cent/point again. The devaluation is reversed. HT: DoC. 2021.1 Update : The points are devalued from 1 cent/point to 0.66 cents/point! Quietly! HT: DoC/MyFICO.

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Benefits

  1. 5k offer: earn 5,000 points after you make at least $500 in purchases within the first 90 days.
  2. Earn 2x points on everything.
  3. The best way to redeem the points is to redeem for cash back at a 1 cent/point ratio, so the point here is basically equivalent to cash back.
  4. No annual fee.

Disadvantages

  1. It has foreign transaction fee, so it's not a good choice outside the US.

How to Join Alliant Credit Union

In order to finish the application process for an Alliant credit card, you have to join Alliant Credit Union. There will not be a hard pull for joining the credit union. Here is the eligibility for joining Alliant. Actually everyone can be eligible. If you are not eligible in any other way, you can become a member of Foster Care to Success (FC2S) (Alliant will pay a $5 membership fee to FC2S on the member’s behalf).

Recommended Application Time

  1. We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least two years and you are very comfortable with the credit card game.

Summary

This is another 2% cash back no annual fee card, similar to Citi Double Cash (DC) (MasterCard), Fidelity Rewards (Visa), and Synchrony PayPal Cashback (Mastercard). Citi Double Cash (DC) is probably the best one among these cards because you can get it from downgrading a card that has a huge sign-up bonus, also its cashback can be converted to potentially more valuable ThankYou Points (TYP).

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