[REVIEW] Neo Card™

UPDATE (APRIL 7, 2022) – Name change of credit card

The cash back credit card industry has really seen a surge in competition over the past 3 years. Neo Financial offers a very unconventional card option that is worth a look. The details may be difficult to find, but we will share our strategy behind it.

Highlights

Below are the highlights of the Neo Financial Cash Back MasterCard Neo Card™ (effective April 6, 2022 now known as Neo Card™):

• No fee (Neo Essential Credit Card), earn 4% average cash back with Neo partner companies
• $2.99 monthly fee (Neo Plus Credit Card), earn 5% average cash back with Neo partner companies
• $8.99 monthly fee (Neo Max Credit Card), earn 6% average cash back with Neo partner companies
• UPDATED (February 10, 2023)- Payment plans Plus and Max are no longer available, they have been replaced with Neo Perks
• Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases

Commentary

What makes this card unconventional is that there are 3 different monthly fee options (instead of the typical yearly annual fees) whereby they can opt-in and out of plans as the cardholder wants.

Furthermore, there is an “average” amount of cash back depending on the tier of annual fee that the cardholder is paying.

The high cash back rates are with partner spending only. Unfortunately, the list of partners is not publicly available on their website, but a user is free to sign up and explore the App to get more information without having to purchase a product. Since there are no specific credit score or income requirements, it may not be difficult to qualify anyway.

Strategy

The strategy that I recommend is to apply for the no fee version of the card first. A no-brainer since there is no cost to that. Start earning the 4% cash back on partner retailers. Earning an average of 4% cash back is still competitive against other credit cards.

Once you get a handle of the features and benefits of the card, correlated to your personal spending habits, then you can consider moving up the monthly fee tiers to benefit from the higher cash back rates.

For all other purchases that only earn 1%, you can still use your other credit cards (that give a better return) to complement your portfolio to optimize your rewards.