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Banking and Cards Research

Digging into the Customer Experience: Banking and Credit Cards

Corporate Insight’s Bank Monitor, Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Card Monitor provide ongoing coverage of the products, websites and overall customer experience offered by the nation’s leading banks and card issuers. Our value-added banking and credit card research digs deeply to evaluate the retail and small business customer experience.

Checking Rewards Programs PDF Print E-mail
Over the last few years, banking rewards have greatly changed, with some firms adding rewards checking accounts or debit cards, while others have cut back or completely removed all such related programs. In this edition of Bank Monitor Report, we investigate which firms offer rewards programs to checking account users, and we examine the earnings, redemption rates and annual fees associated with those rewards options.

Rewards programs come in various forms, from standalone rewards checking accounts, to debit card rewards programs, and add-on rewards programs. As we investigated the various reward programs offered, we focused on the following issues as pertained to checking and debit card rewards programs:
  • Is the program associated with a specific account, or is it available for multiple accounts via a rewards-carrying debit card (or other mechanism)?
  • What are the base-earnings rates for PIN purchases and signature-based purchases?
  • What is the rate of return of points or miles?
Fifteen banking rewards options are currently being offered by nine Bank Monitor firms; a drastic drop from 2010, when 31 options were offered across 12 firms. Of these 15 current rewards programs, six are dedicated rewards checking accounts, six are rewards debit cards, and three are add-on rewards programs not associated with a particular account or card. The latter – add-on rewards programs – offer clients rewards for targeted spending at specific retailers or for having an account open as part of a relationship rewards program.

Of the six rewards debit cards covered in this report, two firms each offer one co-branded airline rewards debit card. Each bank’s airline-branded debit card carries an annual fee and offers initial bonus points, providing check card rewards options similar to credit card rewards offers.

Additional key findings include:
  • Eight checking rewards options use the traditional dollar-value of purchases for accruing points; one firm, offering two checking rewards accounts, awards rewards on a per-purchase basis.
  • Of the reward options discussed in this report, 40% include initial-use bonuses.Nine rewards programs carry fees – three debit card rewards programs and six checking accounts
 
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