a person holding a credit card and a phone
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You’re officially out of excuses for your credit card points earning game…

Bonus points equals more travel and more travel equals life. You may have heard of AwardWallet, or you may have not. It doesn’t matter, because now there’s a reason why you’ll definitely want to download it. As rewards credit cards compete to offer the most bonus points on everything from dining to hotels to Starbucks, it’s hard to know which one to pull out, and equally hard to know which places actually count for bonus points!

a laptop and a phoneAward Wallet

AwardWallet is a really simple and easy app for keeping track of your points and miles balances with hotels, airlines and credit card companies, and even more importantly – they let you know when those points might expire! Phew. But that’s not why you even remotely care about Award Wallet today. The app has just launched a new tool, which can easily be classified as a game changer, because you’re now always a click away from maximizing every single purchase. Like, ever.

contactless credit cardHow It Works

It’s simple and it’s easy. Fire up the AwardWallet app, which you can download on Android here, or Apple iOS here. Tap the “Merchant Lookup” and search for your desired restaurant, grocery store, gas station, coffee spot or wherever you’re about to spend money.

a screenshot of a phoneFor now, it’s limited to the USA, but UK functionality as well as coverage in other markets is being rolled out ASAP. You can also use it online, and in both cases you don’t necessarily even need a free AwardWallet account. According to AwardWallet, they want to be right 100% of the time before they push a market out.

a person holding a credit card and typing on a laptopBonus Points

When you open the “Merchant Lookup” feature, you’ll see what almost every major U.S. credit card on the market earns, at each merchant. Yep, in a single screen you’ll see which card to pull out, or perhaps which card to consider getting down the road to maximize your purchases. Hey, there’s a big difference between 2x bonus points and 5x, you know?

a plate of food on a white surfaceMerchant Coding

This may sound simple enough, but saying that a true master list of how each merchant “codes” is a big deal is like calling Lebron a decent basketball player. It’s huge. Some credit cards offer super vague bonus categories such as entertainment, so knowing for sure what spend will count for what bonus points – and what won’t, is absolutely massive. Similarly, knowing which coffee shops count as dining earning big bonus points, versus those which don’t can be pretty valuable too.

Now you’ll just need to figure out where to go with all those bonus points…

Gilbert Ott

Gilbert Ott is an ever curious traveler and one of the world's leading travel experts. His adventures take him all over the globe, often spanning over 200,000 miles a year and his travel exploits are regularly...

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5 Comments

  1. It’s a great idea, but I just tried to look up Target, Ralphs, Vons, Lowes, Home Depot and the response was “No merchants found”. 🙁

    1. Entered “Home Depot” just now, and one of the suggestions was “HOME DEPOT”. I selected it and saw results from AMEX & Chase. (I am not expert enough to know if the results were complete & accurate.)

  2. I put in Jewel which is a grocery store and it doesn’t show discover as 5%. Not sure if it due to discover being cash back.

    Then I checked She’ll and it doesn’t show the Freedom at 5x. Very sad since it’s award wallet. App can’t be trusted.

  3. Any idea how they make their money? Despite the glitches mentioned above, it seems kind of too good to be true.

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