MyCardBlog

There are many black card designs out there in the market. The most famous one probably is the American Express Black Card which is dedicated to those with high incomes. Other credit card issuers are also promoting their “Black Card” to attract more customers. This post is a summary of 5 cool Black Card designs.

1. American Express Centurion Card: This is the most famous credit card with an annual fee of $2,500. And you must have to spend more than $250,000 each year otherwise your card account will be canceled by American Express. This card is not available for general market. You must have to receive the invitations from American Express to be eligible to submit your application. The complete review of this card can be found here.

2. Citi Chairman Card: This is the Citi version of Black Card. The annual fee for this card is $500. This card is the high end card product from Citi. But the benefits from this card is not so good as those from the American Express Black Card. This card is actually an American Express card although you can’t find any visa, mastercard, or American express card designs. The review on this card can be found here.

3. Bank of America Accolades American Express Card: This is the Bank of America’s version of Black Card. This is the first premium credit card offered by Bank of America targeted exclusively for the banks “affluent, wealthy and ultra- wealthy clients served through Premier Banking & Investments, the Private Bank of Bank of America and its extension, Family Wealth Advisors. After you become one of the account members of the Premier Banking & Investments, you will be eligible to apply for this card. (You must have more than $200,000 in assets with Bank of America.)

4. Merill Lynch Merill+ Visa Card: This is the Merill Lynch version of Black Card. There is nothing special for this card but a black card design. This card features a 1.9% APR on balance transfers, check cash advances and direct deposits for the first 12 billing cycles. There is no annual fee associated with this card.

5. Chase +1 Student MasterCard: This is a very very special black card which doesn’t contain any black features. This card is designed exclusively for college students. So even students can have a black card now. If you are a college student and want to get a “Black Card”, this is your top choice.

As I pointed out in my post “How can Wall Street Crisis Affect Main Street“, the number one result is we will see more banking promotions. And this is true. Most banks have to attract more customers to deposit money in their institutions to meet the requirement from FDIC.

$25 bonus from Citi Ultimate Savings Account

Citibank has a $25 bonus for opening its Ultimate Savings Account with a minimum initial deposit of $1,000. To get the bonus, you have to apply online or via phone call at 877-695-9400 with the promotion code CYA8. The $1,000 initial deposit must have to be maintained in the account for 3 months before the $25 bonus deposited to your account.

The promotion page can be found here. You should remember that:

• This offer is only available for first-time Citibank deposit account customers
• $25 bonus will be credited to your account within 120 days
• This bonus payment will be reported to the IRS as interest earned in the year credited
• NO hard pull any longer for opening a deposit account at Citibank

As a reminder, Citi has a very low ACH outbound transfer limit: $2,000 per day and $10,000 per month.

$50 bonus for opening a Capital One Online Savings Account

The $50 bonus for opening a Capital One Online Savings Account can be found here. Capital One always gives out sign up bonus for this savings account but the typical amount is $25. So I personally think this is a good catch if you want to open a savings account at Capital One.

To get the $50 bonus, you have to open an online savings account at www.capitalonedirect.com/osa1 with promotion code: BONUS50 before 10/31/2008. Of course, you have to fund this account with $25,000 within 30 days of account opening. The bonus code must be provided at the time of the application. The $50 interest credit will be deposited to your account 4-8 weeks after 11/30/2008.

This account has a very competitive rate of 3.55% APY for balance over $10,000. So far there is no nagetive reports about Capital One.

I personally have 12 credit cards which are issued from major credit card issuers at the United States. My credit cards are from Citi, Chase, American Express, Discover, HSBC, WaMu, Bank of America, National City, and a local credit union. Among the above mentioned credit card issuers, I like American Express and Discover best. This is exactly fit with the result from the J. D. Power credit card satisfaction study. Then the question is which credit card issuer I hate most? The answer is Citi!

Following are some funny stories between my friends with Citi.

1. Citi will reduce your credit limit as a way of saying “thank you”!

My friend Jon has a Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students for about 3 years. The credit limit was $12,000 before Citi reduced it. He didn’t use it for a while and then received a mail from Citi several days ago regarding his new credit limit of this credit card.

Congratulations, because of your excellent history with us, we’re increasing your credit line to $6,700. It’s our way of saying thank you.

Then he checked his online account and indeed the credit line was reduced to $6,700. Next time when you receive a similat mail from Citi, you will not be surprised. This is a special way to say “thank you” from Citi.

2. Citi will reject your online application 4 times and then send you a new credit card!

This is a really funny story between my friend Dave with Citi. He applied for the Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Credit Card online at Citicards.com and didn’t get instant approval. He then received the first rejection letter from Citi regarding this application after one week. OK, he knew his application was turned down by the time he received the letter from Citi. However, Citi sent another 3 letters to him regarding the application. All right, Dave was thinking:” I know my application was turned down, why the hell you sent me so many letters?”

However, after some days, he received a new Citi mtvU card in the mail with a congratulation! Funny?

3. Citi will close your already closed credit cards twice!

This is a true story from my friend Jenny. She has a Citi CashReturns MasterCard for about 4 years. She closed the CashReturns card after the 3-month 5% cash back promotion ended. Last month, she received a letter from Citi stating that her CashReturns card was closed by Citi. The funny thing is Citi sent her another letter indicating that her CashReturns card was closed. One letter is not enough to let the customers know that her/his credit card is closed?

4. Citi will close all your credit cards (all means including your already closed credit cards) in one day!

Chris has a lot of credit cards like I do. He currently has 3 Citi credit cards: Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Card, Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network and the Citi Business Card with ThankYou Network. He previously owned many Citi credit cards for taking advantage of the balance transfer offers and sign-up bonuses etc, although he closed many of them including (some were closed more than one year): Citi PremierPass Card-Elite Level, Citi Driver’s Edge Options Platinum Select Card, Citi AT&T Rewards Card, Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage World MasterCard, Citi CashReturns Card, and Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students. Two weeks ago, he received 9 letter from Citi regarding his all 9 credit cards. All of letters informed Chris that his credit cards were closed by Citi.

This is a very horrible experience. You can’t imagine that Citi will do this thing until you experience it by yourself.

Of course, similar experience will also happen from other credit card issuers like Chase. They increased the credit limit of my Chase Freedom Card from $1,500 to $1,800 and kept sending me email and mails about this really “exciting” news. So far, I have received 3 email and 3 mails about the $300 credit limit increase.

If you have any funny stories with credit card issuers, you can leave your comments below.

Citibank just released a new checking account bonus promotion on Friday. Citi had many promotion offers this year and all of the promotion offers were proved to be true. Indeed, Citibank is a reliable bank to jump their promotional offers. The new promotion code is CY73. You can apply for a regular citi checking account online or by phone at 1-800-374-9500.

How to get the $100 bonus?

• Open a qualifying Citibank regular checking account and fund it with a minimum of $1,000 by 12/31/2008
• Within the first month after your account is opened, make at least one direct deposit into your account or make at least two electronic bill payments from your account each month for three consecutive months

The promotion page can be found here.

Some important information you have to notice within the fine print:

• This offer is only available to Citi cardmembers who are the primary credit card account holders
• Offer is not valid for existing Citibank checking customers
• Checking account must be funded with $1,000 or more by 12/31/2008 and must be in a Citibank Account, Citibank Everything Counts or Citigold account relationship package
• The $100 cash bonus will be deposited to your Citibank checking account within 120 days from the end of the statement period in which you met the qualifying requirements

Although $100 bonus is good, you will find that you have to keep combined minimum $6,000 balance in your citi account (checking, savings, loans and/or credit card account) to avoid monthly fees. When you apply for this account, you should think about this. My previous post has some useful thoughts from Jim Semple.

Good news is there is no hard pull reported during the account opening process.

Citi was offering two great promotions back to this March. 1. $200 bonus for opening a checking account. 2. 16,000 thankyou points and triple your thankyou points for 12 months for opening a new Citi checking account. Right now, both of the two offers have expired. However, I believe Citibank will release new promotion code in the near future.

Today I came across a very good chance to get the easiest money. Citi is sending out brochure which indicated that you can have 6,000 bonus thankyou points for making a simple survey. We know that many businesses will do some surveys about their products, services, or websites. And some of them will always give out a certain amount of bonuses. For example, American Express B2B survey once was offering $20 Amazon.com gift card for finishing a 1 min survey. Actually, there are many survey companies that run professional paid surveys. I have a post on how to make some small money by taking surveys. If you want, you can always get some small money by taking some short surveys from SurveySavvy.

This time the Survey from Citi bank is actually not a formal survey. If you have a checking account with them, you can call Citi at 1-866-422-1443 by 08/08/08 and mention code ATTS. After some short questions (less than 2 mins), you can get 6,000 thankyou points in your account at thankyou network in 90 days. The 6,000 thankyou points can be redeemed for a $50 gift card at the thankyou network.

Here is the details:

We’d like to take the opportunity to show our appreciation for your business with a $50 gift card, redeemable with 6,000 thankyou points. If you’re not currently a ThankYou member, we’ll enroll you so you will get the points. Just give us a call!

We can talk about as much or as little as you like. Mostly we’re just looking to know what we can do to make your banking life easier. No matter what, your time will be well spent. (Of course, what you do with the $50 gift card is entirely up to you.)

If you haven’t received the brochure, you can still call them up at 1-866-422-1443 and mention the code to receive the free 6,000 thankyou points! Remember, you have to have a Citi checking account to get the thankyou points!

Citi thankyou network is the rewards program that runs all of the promotions for Citi banking and credit card customers. You can earn thankyou points for having a checking or savings account at Citi. Or you can also earn Citi thankyou points by using Citi credit cards. Thankyou points can be redeemed as gift cards , cash or travel rewards. Some great thankyou rewards cards are: Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network, CitiBusiness Card with ThankYou Network, Citi PremierPass Card, Citi mtvU Card etc.

I reviewed two credit cards before: American Express Centurion Card (also known as the Black Card) and Citi Chairman Card. Both of them charge very high amount of annual fees ($2500 for Centurion Card and $500 for the Chairman Card). Note that the Citi Chairman Card is also an American Express card. Actually, there are many other cards network (Via and MasterCard) offering high annual fee credit cards. The 2007 Luxury Brand Status index (LBSI) survey from the New York-based Luxury Institute indicated that the American Express Centurion Card is the most prestigious credit card among those super wealthy.

Other high-end cards were also rated by the group of 500 ultra-wealthy American consumers with an average $77.5K income and $14.4 million networth. According to the study, American Express Platinum Card was rated as the second best credit card among those super wealthy. And MasterCard Platinum, MasterCard World, MasterCard World Elite, Visa Signature and Visa Platinum were also rated. MasterCard World Elite Card ($395 annual fee) was rated as the third best card.

Obviously, the affluent represent a high-spending and low-risk crowd. They typically charge hundreds of dollars in a single transaction. The credit card issuers can get pretty much transaction fees from the retailers. There are more credit card issuers join this market which will bring high profitable merchant fees to them.

Bank of America later launched the Bank of America Accolades American Express card which is designed to cater the ultra wealthy of Global Wealth & Investment Management’s client. The Accolades card provides the highest level of service Bank of America can offer — superior rewards and unparalleled benefits. Only those with with more than $100,000 in deposits and investments will be invited to apply, and the $295 annual fee will be waived so long as the client maintains a relationship with Bank of America.

Another prestigious credit card for our rich people is the Stratus Rewards Visa Card issued by US Bank. This card is also known as the “white card“. This card has a $1,500 annual fee and only be obtained by invitation or nomination by another card member.

I hope I would be the one with one of the above mentioned credit cards in the future.

I have pointed out in this post that you can get free 100 thankyou points from Citi ThankYou Network by entering the promotion code: CITICCI508IN. Today I realize that many of you might not know this promotion code. 100 thankyou points maybe not too many but will accelerate your accumulation speed. Once you accumulate 10,000 thankyou points in your account, you can redeem a $100 gift card from Citi ThankYou Network.

To get the 100 thankyou points, you should go to the promotion page: https://www.thankyou.com/promotionalCodePage.jspx. Log in your account, and put in the code: CITICCI508IN.Sometimes an error message or “You have previously received bonus points for this promotional code.” might show up, but when you check the point balance, you will see 100 points have already been added in your account. Or you might see the following message: Congratulations! You have received 100 Bonus Points.

The other promotion code is: DPR1CDW408WK. To add this promotion code, you should visit the above mentioned page and log in your account and enter the code. Similar situation might show up but anyway 100 points will be credited to your account. Someone might even get 200 points from this promotion code. It’s highly YMMV.

Citi thankyou network is an excellent rewards program. If you are not a member yet, you can apply for a Citi credit card with thankyou points and register at www.thankyou.com. Suggested Citi credit cards are: Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card for College Students, Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Card, AT&T Universal Savings and Rewards Card and Citi Business Card with ThankYou Network.

Many of you might not know that you can protect your identity with a virtual credit card number when you’re shopping or paying bills online. These one-time use credit card numbers are linked to your actual credit card number, but are unusable by others or will be expired in a certain time period. If someone was able to obtain your virtual credit card number and try to use it elsewhere, it simply would not work. In this way, you can simply protect you and your identity. You don’t have to bother your credit card costumer service and fill in some forms. Virtual credit card number actually is named as Controlled Payment Number when it came out. A Virtual Credit Card Number can also be called as a “substitute credit card number” or “one-time use credit card”. It’s usually generated through the use of a web application or a specialized program offered by your credit card issuers.

Typically, a virtual credit card number has a limit and an expiration date between 2 to 12 months chosen by the account owner and can be used for many times with the same merchant. (can’t use it with many merchants) You real credit card number will never be revealed to the merchant. There are many credit card companies (Citi, Discover, Bank of America) offer this kind of service for free to their customers. I will briefly introduce each of them below:

Citi Bank—Virtual Account Numbers

This is a security feature of Citi credit cards. Whoever has a Citi credit card is eligible to use virtual account number as long as he/she has registered his/her credit card online. Generating a virtual account number is very easy in your Citi online account. Log in to your online account and select “Get a Virtual Account Number” on your screen. You can choose to download a software or opt for the online program which requires you to log in your account each time you need to generate a virtual account number. After you enter you real credit card number, the tool will automatically generate a new number for you. You can decide when the virtual credit card will expire between 2 to 12 months but on longer than the actual expiration date of your real credit card. If you want to change the expiration date, you have to generate a new credit card number. The virtual account numbers can be used when the purchases don’t require the presence of a physical credit card. You have to allow pop-up windows when use this program.

Discover Card—Secure Online Account Numbers

The Secure Online Account Number is a free service that providing additional online security for Discover card members. Like Citi’s virtual account numbers, you can choose to download the software (PC version) or use a online web application (browser version) to generate a virtual account number every time when you need one. For the PC version, download the tool and it will automatically launch each time you go to make a purchase. Click the “Fill Form” button, and a secure account number, Valid Through (Expiration) date and CID (security code) will be generated and automatically entered into the “Credit Card Number” field(s) of the online merchant’s checkout form. For the browser version, you have to follow these steps:

1. Click “Launch Now” button on the Secure Online Account Numbers main page to get a secure number. Sign in with your Account Center user ID and password.
2. Open a new browser window so you can view both Discovercard.com and the shopping site at the same time.
3. Shop at your favorite Web sites, copy and paste the secure number into the retailer’s checkout page. When ordering via phone, give the customer service representative the secure number.

According to Discover card:

Secure account numbers always expire on the same date as your actual Discover Card account number. When your Discover Card is reissued with a new expiration date, it will be necessary to update the expiration information on any retailer’s Web site where you have stored your actual card number or any secure account numbers.

Bank of America—ShopSafe

ShopSafe is a free service that can generate a temporary credit card number every time you want to make an online purchase.This number links directly to your real credit card account number but keeps your card number completely private and completely protected. The ShopSafe number is used as another credit card number but the merchant will never know your actual account number. To get ShopSafe, sign in to Online Banking and choose “Use ShopSafe” from your Account Activity screen. You can enter desired spending limit and expiration date there. And then ShopSafe creates a temporary account number that allows you to purchase with confidence. The ShopSafe service allows you to set your “Valid Thru” date for up to 1 year in the future.

Note: American Express card is not eligible to generate a virtual credit card number from above card issuers.

When you are not confident with some online merchants, you can use virtual credit card to help you prevent any credit card fraud.