As a long time Discover card holder, my only real frustration is in determining how we earn cashback bonuses. To the standard card holder, they get their bill and see something like this:

So it looks on the surface like I had a decent month in terms of cashback bonus earned. I earned some for the quarterly spend to earn 5%. I then had some Shop Discover purchases and earned some more cashback bonus. Then there is the typical 1% earn on all my other spending. However, exactly what does all that mean? How did I really earn it?

What I previously requested Discover to do is actually put the information on the bill. So if I spent $X dollars at merchant ABC, have another column that shows I earned $Y amount of cashback. Then, we as the consumer would know how we are earning our cashback bonus, and exactly where we stand, for example, with the quarterly $1,500 limit to earn 5% cashback bonus. However, the information is still not readily available.

Deal Details

In my discussions with Discover, they have confirmed that there are ways to double and even triple dip the amount of earnings in their cashback program.

• For the final quarter of the year, Discover is offering guests the chance to earn 5% cashback bonus on up to $1,500 in online purchases.

  One could simply use Amazon Payments to send someone $1,000 one month and $500 the next month and earn the full $75 cashback bonus. However, is it the best use of spend?

• The Shop Discover program is offering increased Holiday payouts to 92 different merchants. What this means is that by simply signing into your Discover card and using the links to the respective merchants online stores, you can earn from 10-25% cashback bonus in your account. Are we done there?
• Lastly, Discover is offering a flat $30 cashback bonus on a single $1,000 or more purchase. In addition, you can potentially earn this reward up to 3 times.

In Conclusion

Discover has confirmed with us that if one were to take advantage of all three promotions above, you could potentially triple dip the earning potential.

So lets look at a quick example. We will assume you had yet spent any money this quarter with online purchases, and have logged into your account and registered your card for the promotion. If you were to visit the Shop Discover portal and go to Home Depot or Sears, and make a $1,000 appliance purchase, you would earn the following cashback bonus.

10% Shop Discover + 5% quarterly cashback bonus + $30 for big ticket purchase (effectively 3%) = 18% cashback bonus or a $180 discount in the form of cash in your hand. That is an incredible return on your purchase.

Save Money, Travel More!

Source: InACents