Key takeaways
- Discover it® Chrome offers solid first-year value with its Cashback Match program.
- This card has three fraud protection benefits, including the ability to freeze your account, privacy protection, and identity alerts.
- You can redeem cash back rewards as statement credits, electronic deposits, charitable donations and gift cards.
- The Discover it® Chrome has a decent intro APR offer for new cardholders.
The Discover it® Chrome isn’t your typical cash back credit card. Its streamlined benefits and first year Cashback Match™ make it a solid choice for people with good credit who want to earn decent rewards on dining and gas purchases. This card is ideal for people upgrading from their secured credit card or student card to one that offers a simple rewards structure and functional benefits. Uncover which benefits you could enjoy and the keys to maximizing the Discover it® Chrome.
Discover it® Chrome benefits
Discover it® Chrome doesn’t carry the standard benefits you might find on the top cash back cards. You won’t find any purchase protections, annual statement credits or extended warranties, but you will find its Cashback Match program and no annual fee useful. If you’ve never found value in those other card benefits, then that might not be a drawback for you.
Fraud protection benefits
The Discover it® Chrome offers a few ways to keep your identity safe with a brief selection of tools available to its cardholders:
- Freeze it: This lets you temporarily freeze your account to prevent new transactions from coming through.
- Discover Identity Alerts: A free service that monitors your Experian credit report for new inquiries and monitors for leaks of your personal information.
- Online privacy protection: Scans 10 people-search sites every 90 days for your personal information and helps you submit opt-out requests.
Plus, if your card is compromised or lost, you can have it quickly replaced for free and get it overnighted to your address.
Discover it® Chrome rewards
Discover it® Chrome has a cash back rewards program that offers a rate of 2 percent cash back on your first $1,000 of restaurant and gas station purchases each quarter and 1 percent on everything else. The calendar quarters begin on January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1. After you’ve reached your quarterly cap for 2 percent cash back, you’ll earn unlimited 1 percent cash back on all other purchases. Those rewards can be redeemed in multiple ways:
- Gift cards
- Charitable donations
- Electronic deposit
- Statement credit
- Pay with rewards at checkout with Amazon.com and Paypal
Cashback Bonus®
The rewards you accumulate from using the Discover it® Chrome are simple to understand and are referred to as your Cashback Bonus. To show how much you could earn with the Discover it® Chrome, let’s say you hit the $1,000 spending cap on the 2 percent categories every quarter for one year. You also spend $1,000 outside of the 2 percent categories each quarter. Here’s how much cash back you would earn:
| Spending Category | Spending per quarter | Cashback earned |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | $500 | $10 |
| Gas Stations | $500 | $10 |
| Other purchases | $1,000 | $10 |
| Quarterly Total: | $2,000 | $30 |
| Annual Total: | $8,000 | $120 |
The spending cap on the cash back you can earn reduces the usefulness of this card for people who spend more than $333 a month at restaurants and gas stations. However, it could make sense for someone whose budget fits within that quarterly threshold.
Cashback Match
Discover doesn’t offer a traditional welcome bonus for new cardholders, but that doesn’t mean you’ll miss out on rewards. To sweeten the deal, Discover matches each dollar of cash back you earn in your first year through its Cashback Match program. So if you earned $120 of cash back in your first year, you’d be rewarded with an extra $120 at the end of the year, totaling $240 in cash back. But the offer is only for your first year with the card. Especially compared to the Discover it® Cash Back card, this card doesn’t earn as much cash back after the first year.
Purchase and balance transfer offers
Do you need to transfer a high-interest credit card balance or finance a large purchase? The Discover it® Chrome has two introductory offers that could save you money on interest and make it worth it to choose this card:
- 0 percent introductory APR for 15 months on purchases
- 0 percent introductory APR for 15 months on balance transfers
After the introductory period ends, the ongoing APR for this card is 18.24 percent to 28.24 percent. If you do a balance transfer with Discover it® Chrome, there is a balance transfer fee of 3 percent for up to three transfers posted to your account by the cut-off date noted within your terms and conditions. Balance transfers performed after your cut-off date have a balance transfer fee of 5 percent. Remember that this card has no grace period on your balance transfers.
Maximizing the Discover it® Chrome
Maximizing the Discover it® Chrome requires monitoring your spending habits in the higher-rate rewards categories so you don’t overshoot the quarterly cap and get reduced cash back on purchases that could be better rewarded by a different card. Avoid this by pairing the Discover it® Chrome with one of the top flat-rate cash back cards to consistently earn a higher rate on purchases other than restaurants and gas stations.
Another way to maximize the Discover it® Chrome is to finance a large purchase or transfer a high-interest credit card balance with its introductory APR offer. You can minimize interest charges with a solid plan to pay off the balance before the intro period ends. Once you receive your card, you’ll also want to fully use the fraud protection benefits by registering for the Discover identity alerts and online privacy protection.
At the end of your first year, evaluate whether this card’s cash back program still adequately rewards your spending without the Cashback Match so you know if it’s worth keeping long term.
The bottom line
When you’re testing the waters of using cash back credit cards, the Discover it® Chrome makes it easy to get the hang of it with a simple rewards structure, no annual fee and streamlined benefits. To get this card, we recommend a credit score in the good to excellent range.
The Discover it® Chrome is worth it when your restaurant and gas station spending doesn’t exceed the $1,000 quarterly spending cap. If you notice your spending surpassing that limit, use a flat-rate cash back card to help you continue earning higher rewards on your purchases. Overall, this card is a good introduction to the world of cash back credit cards, but you’ll want to re-evaluate how well this card works for you after the first year.
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