By : Mr Credit Card

Bank Americard Visa®
Card issued by FIA Card Services, N.A.

Summary - Bank of America is always tweeking the design of their card offerings. This one is the latest iteration their their vanilla Visa card. The Bank Americard Visa® Card is a basic no-frills credit card which will appeal to those looking for a basic card from a major bank. Find out more about this card.

Annual Fee and APR - The Bank Americard Visa® Card was formerly known as simply the Bank of America Visa Platinum. Like it's predecessor, it has no annual fee. You get an introductory 0% APR for both purchases and balance transfers for either 9 or 12 billing cycles. The APR varies depending on your credit history

Other Platinum Benefits - Being a platinum card, the Bank of America Visa Platinum offers standard platinum benefits like travel and emergency assistance, automatic auto rental insurance and a few other perks.

Add It Up Online Shopping Portal - Bank of America has a shopping portal called the ADD It Up program. It is very similar to Citi's Bonus Cash Center, Discover's shopdiscover.com and Chase Ultimate Rewards. Basically, the portal has online merchant partners and if you use your BOA card to shop with them through your BOA account, then you will earn rebates (more than 1%).

While comparing this card with other cards should be pretty straight forward with other vanilla cards, the fact that BOA recently allowed all their cards to participate in the Add It Up program means we also have to so some comparison with cash back cards (since Add It Up is a cash back program). Let's let's begin.

Versus Citi Platinum Select Card - The Citi Platinum Select Card is Citi's vanilla card. While the BOA has access to the add it up online shopping portal program, the Citi Platinum Select has a little known reward program called Citi Extra Cash, which allows the cardholder to earn 10 points per dollar spent. It can be used to get gift card discounts and to book international flights and hotels. Citi also has a great feature whereby you can change your credit card number whenever you shop online for extra security.

The Citi Platinum Select however, beats the Bank Americard Visa in terms of balance transfer deals, and in fact, has over the years offered better 0% deals to entice new customers. At the moment, Citi has a 0% Intro APR for 21 months for balance transfer, which handily beats any BOA card.

Versus Citi Diamond Preferred Card - Citi has another card which is really similar to the Citi Platinum Select Card. And that is the Citi Diamond Preferred Card. The Diamond Preferred Card does not have a shopping portal like Add It Up. It does have a concierge service (rare for a "vanilla card"). And it consistently offers a better 0% Intro APR deal than BOA (presently, you get 0% APR for balance transfers and purchases for 21 months).

Versus Capital One Visa - Capital One has a few "vanilla" cards and we shall compare this card with the Capital One Prestige Card (because it has no annual fee and some of Cap One's other cards have annual fees because they are targeted at folks with less than perfect credit). Like most vanilla cards, the K1 Prestige card does not have a shopping portal, so it loses out on this front. It does have a slighter better balance transfer deal at the moment, but not by much. The thing that Capital One has got going for them is that all their cards have no foreign transaction fees. So in this aspect, it is better than most cards including any BOA cards.

Versus Chase Slate - The vanilla card for Chase at the moment is the Chase Slate. It does not have any online shopping portal so the BOA beats it on this front. But Chase has a unique feature that blueprint, which allows you to assign a specific expense to be "techinically paid off" and you would incur any interest charges on those items even if you carry a balance. The Chase Slate also has a a 0% Intro APR on balance transfers for up to 15 months. Once again, if you are looking for a balance transfer deal, Chase appears to be the better bet.

Versus Chase Freedom - Enough of comparing this card with other "vanilla cards". Since it has the "Add It Up" feature, we might as well compare with other cards with online shopping portal (and they are all cash back cards). The first card up the list is the Chase Freedom. The Chase Freedom has a online shopping portal with their Ultimate Rewards Program. It is very similar to the Add It Up program. But the Freedom Card has quarterly rotating categories where you can earn 5% rebates on certain types of expenses (and they change every three months). From this perspective, it is better than the Bank Americard Visa.

Versus Discover More - The Discover More Card is very similar to the Chase Freedom in that it has a rotating category (quarterly) that pays 5% rebates. Their online shopping portal is called shopdiscover.com and it has over 150 merchant partners. Though it has less partners than Add It Up, the rebates on Discover's portal for identical merchants is higher. So once again, when compared to a "rotating category" card with an online shopping portal, the BOA Visa loses out.

Versus Citi Dividend Card - The Citi Dividend Card is like the Chase Freedom and Discover More Card. It's online shopping portal is called the Citi Bonus Cash Center and it too has 5% quarterly rotating categories. So it matches the BOA on the online shopping portal and beats it with the rotating categories.

Verdict - The Bank Americard Visa® is a basic Visa Card with a slight twist, in that it has a online shopping portal called Add It Up (which most plain vanilla cards do not have). Because of this added feature, one could argue that is slightly better than a plain old Visa or MasterCard. But compared to cash back cards with online shopping portal, it loses out because it does not have any 5% rotating categories.

If the online shopping feature is what attracts you to this card, then you should consider the Discover It Card instead because aside from an online shopping portal, they have 5% rotating categories that let's you earn more rebates.