Here’s a question we got from a reader:

HI MR CREDIT CARD;

WOULD YOU KNOW OF A MASTERCARD OR VISA CARD WITH THE REWARDS BENEFITS THAT MATCH ESCAPE BY DISCOVER?? THIS ONE SEEMS TO MEET MY NEEDS ,BUT ITS NOT ACCEPTED IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES,WHICH I NEED. i HAVE AN AMEX WITH A GOOD REWARDS BUT FIND I ALSO NEED A VISA /MASTER CARD WITH MANY SUPPLIERS.BUT I M SHOPPING FOR THE FREEDOM TO TRANSFER AND BOOK MY OWN RESERVATIONS,LIKE THE ESCAPE OR AMEX REWARDS CARDS. THANKS FOR ANY HELP IN THIS SEARCH.

ESTHER KLEIN

Answer – Esther – The best card that I can think of right now is the Citi® PremierPass Card – Elite Level. This card comes with a $75 annual fee. But here’s what you get :

I think the reason this card will suit you is because Citi’s reward program (ThankYou Rewards) now has the policy of letting you book your own flights and hotels etc. The only catch is that you have to use Expedia.com (which I gather is OK since they are one of the largest online travel agents and you should be able to get pretty good deals there). This is the only program that I know that allows that.

Most other reward program like say Chase or Bank of America’s WorldPoints require that you book your flights through their own internal agent.

Capital One (on a couple of cards allow you to book your own flights with anybody you want). However, most of their cards do not. Because they segment their card by your credit level, you may not get the card that actually allows you to book your own flights and redeem later with points. Hence, I would not recommend them for that purpose although they are the rare card that does not impose any foreign transaction fee.

The only other comparable to the Discover Escape is the Amex Blue Sky (which works the same way). The Blue Sky is actually almost identical to the Miles Card (the no annual fee version of the Escape Card). But since you already have an Amex and want specifically a Visa or Mastercard, we’ll rule this one out.

Hence, my suggestion that you look at the Citi PremierPass Card.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 06:48 and is filed under Credit Cards FAQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.