We continue our series of online shopping portal review with Bank of America’s Add It Up portal. Unlike other credit card online shopping portals, Add It Up is available to those with a simple BOA checking account (that means you do not need to get their credit cards to have this feature). If you do not have a BOA credit card account, you simply use your debit card that is given to you when you open a checking account.

Here are instructions on how to access the BOA’s Add It Up program. Firstly, you have to log into your account and you do so by going to www.bankofamerica.com and logging into the account. In this example, I am actually using my account. You can go to the Add It Up site from the link (shown in the orange arrow).

Once you get to the Add It Up home page, you will see several offers. If you look at the left navigation, you can see that you can search their online retail partners by category. There are also “limited time offers” searches and there are also “recommendations for you”!

To demonstrate how this works, we will be using dell.com as an example. Let us assume that we are going to buy something from dell.com. We’ll click on the dell.com link on the previous page and it will take us to this page (below) where the terms and conditions are listed. In dell.com’s case, the special offer is an addtional 3% rebates on top of the regular 2% rebates, making it a total of 5%. The offer is limited until the end of February.

But to be sure there are no surprises, you should actually click on the “blue terms and conditions link” and check out what it has to say. And true enough, there are more terms that you should be aware of. The first thing it says is that if you call dell for customer support and service (with any questions), you may not receive you add it up cash back. They also list several types of purchases like gift cards or purchases from auctions@DellExchange that are not eligible to earn the cash back from Add It Up. It also says that you can only earn cash back from 2 orders a month and the shipping has to be within the 50 US States and the District of Columbia. It further says that you will not earn cash back from Dell Small Business website if you click the tab on dell.com. You have to go to the Dell Small Business website (also a Add It Up partner) directly from the Add It Up menu.

So as you can see, it pays to read the terms and conditions before making your purchases. Once you are ready, just click the shop now button and it will take you to Dell.com where your purchases made with your BOA debit or credit card will be tracked.

Like the Citi Bonus Cash Center and Capital One Perk Central, Add It Up also has “in store” or “off line sotre” partners. If you click “instore” on the left navigation bar, it will take you to the following page (see below).

Once again, we will use a merchant as an example to see how this works. We will choose FTD. By clicking on the FTD link, it takes us to this page (below) where it list certain terms and conditions. It turns out that you can receive rebates from FTD even if you order by phone. They even listed the coupon code that you have to use with it together with their home iphone.

Key Statistics of Add It Up – Compared to other credit card online shopping portals, the Add It Up program has got the second most number of partners (behind Citi Bonus Cash Center which has the most). In total, they have 528 partners (as of our last count in January 2012). Out of the 528 partners, 246 partners offered either the highest rebates, matched the highest rebates or were exclusive merchants.

The other key difference between this program and others is that you do not need a BOA credit card to use it. As long as you have a checking account, you can use your BOA debit card and earn cash back from your online and off line shopping.

Opinion – The Add It Up is a pretty decent online shopping portal. Among the five major credit card issuers that we studied, the Add It Up portal has got the second largest number of merchant partners (behind Citi Bonus Cash Center). That means it has more partners than Capital One’s Perk Central, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Discover. It also has off line partners where you can also shop over the phone and earn rebates (though Citi also has catalog partners).

For us, shopdiscover still remains our Editor’s Choice because the minimum payout is 5% (the highest minimum level compared to everyone else) and the Citi Bonus Cash Center has more partners than any other portal and comes in a close second place. This puts BOA’s Add It Up slightly behind Citi but ahead of Perk Central and Ultimate Rewards.

I wouldn’t rush out to get a BOA card simply because of Add It Up. But if you have one of their cash back cards or a checking account, you might just want to check it out the next time you shop online. It might earn you some cash rebates and save you a few bucks.

This is our ongoing series of online shopping portal review and today we will be looking at Capital One’s online shopping portal which is called Perk Central. Unlike Discover’s shopdiscover, Citi’s Bonus Cash Center of BOA’s Add It Up program, Perk Central is very much part of Capital One’s reward program. In this aspect, it is very similar to Chases’ Ultimate Rewards Shopping Mall.

First, let’s look at how you can access the portal. The first step is to log into your capital one account by going to www.capitalone.com. After you log in, it will display your credit card information and you have to click on the “explore rewards” link (shown at the arrow).

Clicking on the “explore rewards” link will take you to Capital One’s reward program page. To go to Perks Central page, you have to get to the “earn rewards” button on the top navigation and click online stores. That will take you to the page below.

There are a variety of ways in which you can search for your merchants. For example, you can “browse all merchants” (which is how it will look like below). You can also browse via categories, special offers. If you browse via all merchants, you will get a page (like below) listing every merchant partner that Perk Central has via alphabetical order. Beside the merchant will be the number of “miles” you will earn per dollar. Hence, the Perk Central program is not a strictly cash rebate program like the shopdiscover or Citi Bonus Cash Center program. Instead, you earn extra Capital One points for every dollar that you spend with their merchant partners and you can redeem these points for products on their program like merchandise and travel.

Once you have decided which online merchant you would like to shop with, you just have to click on their icons. In this example, we will pretend that we want to buy stuff at Ace Hardware online. So we click on the Ace Hardware link and it takes us to the following page where the terms and conditions are listed. In this example, they state that you will earn the extra miles from net purchases of products from Ace and this will not include things like taxes and shipping (which is very standard). Gift cards also do not count towards earning the extra miles. It also states that you will only earn the extra miles if you shop at Ace Hardware online via logging into your Capital One account. After clicking the “shop now” button, you will be taken to Ace online store where you purchases with your Capital One Card will be tracked.

Another feature of Perk Central is that they also have partners with off line stores or what they call in store partners. If you look at the screen shots, on the left navigation, there is a link to instore deals. When you click on it, it will take you to the following page (see below). This is where they will show their in store partners, the number of miles you can earn etc. One of the things you have to do before you go to the store to buy stuff is that you have to “activate your account” for that store from the “activate button” (see below’s screen shot).

Key Features of Perk Central Compared With It’s Peers – First, let’s get a couple of key statistics out of the way. As of January 2012, Perk Central has 351 partners (Chase has 360, Add It Up has 528 and Citi Bonus Cash Center has 594 partners) and they have 238 partners which matches or has the highest payouts.

So in terms of number of merchants, they are really in the middle of the pack. The one feature they have is that they also have off line or in store partners where you can earn extra miles when you shop at a physical store partner. However, I feel that the Citi Bonus Cash Center has a slightly better deal here. That is because some of Citi’s off line partners allow you to buy their products over the phone or through their catalogs. I also prefer the Citi’s web interface because I can search for stores by inputing my zip code and the miles radius. Perks Central’s off line stores requires “activation” of your card which is a little inconvenient.

Opinion – The Perk Central portal stands in the middle of pack compared to other credit card portals in terms of number of merchants. It does have off line portals as well but the Citi Bonus Cash Center has better features on that front. For us, shopdiscover is still our Editor’s Choice as their minimum rebate is 5% (Perk Central starts at 1 mile/$1) and Citi is a close runner up because of the sheer number of merchants they have. This does not mean that Capital One’s Perk Central is bad. It simply means you should not get a Capital One card solely because of Perk Central. Capital One cards are known for their absence of foreign transaction fees (so is Discover) and their willingness to give folks with less than stellar credit a regular unsecured card. If your Capital One card comes with rewards, then consider the Perk Central as a “perk” and use it to earn “more miles” or “points”.

Citi Bonus Cash Center is the online shopping portal for Citibank. In this post, we will review this shopping portal. The Citi Bonus Cash Center has existed for many years for cardholders of the Citi Dividend Platinum Select Card. Back in 2006, the Citi Dividend paid 5% rebates on “everyday purchase” like gasoline, supermarket and drugstore spending but capped the annual rebates to $300. However, folks who shopped on Citi Bonus Cash Center could earn unlimited rebates. But then, the number of merchant partners was limited. But it has steadily grown and today, they have the most number of merchant partners compared to other online shopping portals.

Let’s look at how one can access the portal.

As you can see in the screen shot, you can search merchants by type, browse every merchant or go by alphabetical order.

Citi Bonus Cash not only has online merchant partners, but they also have off line in store partners where you can get rebates if you use your Citi Dividend Card at the stores. Quite often, the in store partner also has partnership with Citi for their online store. Some stores allow you to call them to order stuff and as long as you pay with your Citi Dividend card, you will get your extra rebates. There are stores where you can also earn extra rebates if you buy from their catalog or even if you call them and order by phone. There are also special coupon codes you can use for certain merchants.

If you look at the screen shot below, you will see the in store page. You can search for by phone and catalog offers, by cash rebates, and even by coupons. You can also search for stores within your zip code and you can specify by how many miles from your home should the search begin.

Comparison with other shopping portals – After having completed our recent survey on credit card reward programs shopping portal, the one thing that stands out for the Citi Bonus Cash Center is that they have more merchant partners than all other portals. At the time of the survey (January 2012), they had 594 online merchant partners (we did not even bother with the off line stores because most other portals do not have off line partners). Of the 594 partners, 207 of them had the highest rebates among other portals (if the merchants were also on other portals). Among the 207 merchants, some were also exclusive merchants with Citi. One of the reasons that Citi had so many partners was because they have many boutique online partners. That means that aside from the usual GAP, Best Buy partners, they have many other unique online stores.

The advantage that they have over other online portals is that they also have off line partners. And some of their off line partners allow you to shop via phone or through their catalogs. This is very unique and stands in contrast with a portal like the shopdiscover which only has online partners.

One of the things you have to be aware of is that we started doing our survey in December. And during that time (with the exception of Discover), other online shopping portals were changing partners and having also changing the rebates they pay. Hence, you have to be aware that a merchant may be Citi’s partner now, but later switch to another credit card issuer.

Cards Which Has Citi Bonus Cash Center Feature – The Citi Dividend Card and their student version (which incidentally are both cash back cards) can be used at Citi Bonus Cash Center. All you have to do is to log into the site using your credit card account login credentials.

Verdict and Opinion – The Citi Bonus Cash Center stands out among its competitors by having the most number of merchant partners and also giving cardholders the option of shopping via catalog, phone or in store for some of their partners. In our opinion, this portal loses out only slightly to Discover’s shopdiscover portal because Discover’s minimum rebate rate is 5% (a pretty high bar that no other portals can match). But in terms of sheer number of partners, no one comes even close.

We are starting a series of reviews of online shopping portals that are offered by credit card issuers. In this episode, we will be looking at Discover’s online shopping portal called shopdiscover.com. What shopdiscover.com offers Discover cardholders is a chance to save money when they shop online with their merchant partners. In this review, we will look at how you actually use the portal. We will also be looking at certain statistics like how many merchant partners is participating in the portal, what rebates can you earn and more importantly, how does it compare with other credit card online shopping portals?

How to access shopdiscover.com? – To access shopdiscover.com, you would first have to log into your Discover account. Do do that, just go to www.discovercard.com.

After you have logged into your account, this is how it will look like. You have a couple of ways to get to the shopdiscover site (indicated by the arrows).

Once you get into the shopdiscover site, you can browse by retailers, travel deals etc. For demonstration purposes, I clicked on the browse retailer tab at the top navigation and it took me to the following page.

As you can see, this page list all the retailers that are on shopdiscover. You can also narrow it down by search for the level of rebate. For example, if you look at the left navigation, there is a button for 5% rebates merchants, 10% ones etc. You can also search via categories (ie type of retailers). There is also a navigation that takes you to retailers who offer free shipping.

For this review, I’ll pick Advanced Auto Parts as an example of a retailer that I would like to shop from. So I clicked on “Advanced Auto Parts” icon and it takes me to the terms and conditions page. For this retailer, you can get free shipping if you spend $75 or more and the free shipping applies to both your home or to a local store for pickup. You’ll also see that you do not earn the 5% cash back on things like taxes etc (only on the purchase price).

But what I like about this page is that at the bottom, there are coupon codes specifically for Discover Card holders that you can use to save even more money. When you click the “start shopping button”, you will be taken to the retailer’s website, which would be the same as if you went to your browser directly. But by going through Discover and using your Discover More Card, your purchases can be tracked and you can earn 5% rebates.

Basic Statistics – We just finished conducting a survey of online shopping portals and here are some basic stats on shopdiscover. As of January 2012, they have 207 merchant partners. Compared to other shopping portals from Chase, Citi, BOA and Capital One, Discover has the least number of merchants. But out of the 207 merchants partners that they have, 166 of them (in total) was either an exclusive merchant, had the highest rebate among all other portals or matched the highest rebate paid. That means for Discover Card holders, you can almost be assured that you will be earning the most rebates for the majority of your purchases here.

Another observation is that the minimum rebate that Discover pays is 5%. Other portals start their rebates at 1%. Hence, with Discover, you can be assured that you will earn at least 5% rebates when you shop with their partners.

In terms of type of partners, ShopDiscover probably has the best relationship with mainstream fortune 500 retailers. Hence if you shop at apple.com, GAP.com, Walmart.com etc, you will be getting the best rebates with Discover compared to other portals. The reason why other portals may have more merchant partners is because most of them are boutique online stores that are not really “mainstream” or well known.

Verdict and Opinion – In our opinion, shopdiscover is probably the best online shopping portal among the major credit card issuers. The reason is because they pay a minimum of 5% rebates (compared to 1% for other portals). Secondly, among the partners they have, shopping with the bulk of them gets you the most rebates compared to other portals. Most of their partners are mainstream fortune 500 type retailers and so consumers will be very familiar with them.

The only quibble I have with the program is that their competitors have more merchant partners. But that is probably due to the face that Discover insists on paying their cardholders at least 5% rebates and potential partners might actually balk at supporting that payout structure (I suspect that is the main reason).

Otherwise, shopdiscover gets Ask Mr Credit Card’s shopping portal of the year award.

Cards that have shopdisover ShopDiscover is available on Discover More Card, Discover OpenRoad Card and the Discover More Student Card.

President Obama was filmed on CBS shopping at Best Buy last year (2011). While most reports focused on what he actually bought for his kids for Christmas, I was more interested in what carried card he carried. While I was watching the film, I noticed that his credit card was “black”. Only a credit card nerd and geek like me would be interested in stuff like that. So here is my best guess by deduction and elimination, of what credit card he carries.

Possible Black cards – Since the color of his credit card is black, I think it is possible to narrow down the possible cards. So here we go.

Amex Black Card – Given that he was even wondering if his credit card still works, it is highly unlikely that that he carries the Amex Centurion. He is a democrat, and has a more left and liberal leaning opinion. Hence carrying one of the ultimate status symbols of the “1%” ain’t going to look too good. So I think we can rule out this card. Since he will be flying Air Force One and staying in the best hotels guarded by his secret service agents, none of the perks like Ritz Carlton room upgrades, lounge access is going to matter to him.

Visa Black Card – One again, I doubt that this was the card he was using. There was some dash of white or silver color on the card and the Visa Black card is literally all black. Since Visa Black is supposedly targeted at very few folks (but it seems having a five figure W2 qualifies) and cost $450 in annual fee, I doubt Barack Obama will be seem using this card.

Delta Reserve Card – One again, I doubt the President would be caught carrying an elite $450 credit card. There is a blue Amex logo at the bottom right of the card and I did not see it in the video. He flies Air Force One and does not need the MQMs to get the Silver Elite Status! His bags fly free as well.

Alaska Airlines Visa – This is a possibility as there is a dash of white on the card (which is black). One would presume that as a Senator in Chicago, he might have used this card to rack up some Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

Virgin Atlantic Amex Card – The Virgin Amex Black card is another possibility. But the only problem is that I doubt Obama would be saving miles to fly to London or Europe. Who knows, he might have taken advantage of past 50,000 bonus miles sign up? But I think we can rule out this card because I did not see the Blue Virgin Logo and Amex Logo on Obama’s card.

Asian Amex Card – Yes the card is blackish. But I really cannot imagine Obama saving Asiana miles to fly to Korea? Perhaps he is savvy enough to use the points with alliance airline partners (highly unlikely). There also isn’t any Blue Amex Logo on Obama’s card, so I think we can rule out this one.

Overstock Credit Card – Overstock’s new credit card comes in black color. Perhaps the President is a bargain hunter and likes to get stuff on sale and discounts. This one might just be a possibility although I have to wonder where does he find the time to be surfing the net for bargains? Perhaps the First Lady does all the online shopping?

Sony Credit Card – Sony’s card is also black in color. Perhaps the President unwinds by playing lots of Playstation games and he earns reward points with the card buying their games. He also might have used his points to get a Sony Plasma TV as well! This card is definitely a possibility.

Adventium Card – Yikes. This is a subprime card that is issued by First Premier Bank. It is black, presumably to give the illusion that it is a prestige card and on the hopes that folks with bad credit are more likely to apply because of the “black color”. I really do not think the President will be using Aventium and I certainly hope not. I would assume that he was have a decent credit score and the nation would be shocked if he had bad credit!

BOA Business Charge Card – The dark grey color of the card sure looks like the one the President is carrying. Although why he would actually get a business charge card puzzles me. Perhaps he has an account with BOA? Or maybe he used to have a small business (doubt it because we would all know by now?).

BOA Accelerated Rewards Amex – The BOA Accelerated Rewards Card has a very dark greyish color that looks like the card the President is carrying. The only issue is that I did not see the bright blue Amex logo at the bottom right on his card. So that means it’s probably not this card? But being a no annual fee rewards card, I can see how the President would have applied for this.

Are we any closer to figuring out which card President Obama has? – After looking at the possibilities of credit cards with black color, I think the President could either be carrying the Alaska Airlines Visa, Sony Credit Card or Overstock.com Visa. The Amex Centurion Card is a possibility just based on the “blur image”, though I really doubt it.

So what do you folks think after watching the video? Any other ideas you would like to share? I bet I missed out a couple of other “similar color cards”. Please help me figure out which card Obama used in the video.