Rakuten offers up to $150 extra when you apply for a Bank of America card through its portal. The fees are as follows:
Users who chose to receive Membership Rewards points instead of cash back will see $0.
Affiliates can sometimes earn more than $500 per successful applicant. Normally, shopping portals are prohibited from offering credit card incentives as other affiliate partners don’t like it. Rakuten must have negotiated this deal specifically with Bank of America to avoid these clauses. (We never use credit card affiliate links on Doctorofcredit.)
Rakuten launched something similar to Chase that at one point offered $300/30,000 bonus points. At first, this was a smaller bonus, so it’s possible that Rakuten will increase these Bank of America offers. It’s important to note that this $150/$75 is in addition to the standard sign-up bonuses on these cards which are:
- Custom Cash: $200 + increased cashback the first year
- Travel Rewards: 25,000 points after $1,000 spent
We have actually tried to negotiate similar increased bonuses for our readers with direct card networks before and have always been told that this is not possible due to existing contracts with other partners (we are working on an agreement that would effectively pass any affiliate commission to a charity partner). It’s great to see that Rakuten has been able to do this and hopefully they can expand on it.
If you don’t already have a Rakuten account you can currently get a $50 referral bonus.
