Credit Card News
Discover Reveals 5% Bonus Categories for Final Quarter of 2024
As we head into the holiday season, Discover has unveiled its fourth-quarter bonus category picks.
About the Q4 2024 Discover It 5% categories:
Starting on October 1st, Discover It customers will be able to earn up to 5% back on purchases from two major retailers. First up is Amazon — which has been a fixture of Discover’s fourth-quarter bonus categories since at least 2015. While this category will of course cover Amazon.com purchases including digital downloads, Amazon Fresh orders, Amazon Local Deals, Amazon Prime subscriptions, and items sold by third-party merchants via the Amazon marketplace. Also included are in-store purchases at Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations. Notably, Whole Foods (which is owned by Amazon) is excluded from this bonus category.
The other retailer included in this bonus category is Target. That makes 2024’s fourth quarter a complete repeat of Q4 2023. Meanwhile, this pairing was also featured in Q4 2017. Target and Target.com have also been part of several other past quarterly bonus categories.
As for what this Target category covers, purchases in-store, on Target.com, or using the Target app will all qualify. However, purchases made from merchants or stand-alone stores found within physical Target locations may not be eligible for this bonus.
These selections come after a quarter that included yet another massive retailer: Walmart. Through September 30th, cardholders can earn 5% back on purchases at Walmart as well as at grocery stores.
In order to earn the 5% back, cardholders will need to activate this quarter’s offer. This can be done by visiting the Discover site or app. Additionally, the 5% is capped at $1,500 in combined bonus category spending, meaning that customers can earn a maximum of $75 cashback from this bonus during the quarter.
My thoughts:
Being the nerd that I am, I do want to point out that Discover was either delayed or early in its announcement this quarter. Normally, the bank has been revealing the next quarter’s selection on the first of the previous month — but that would have been a Sunday this time. So their calendar said the reveal would come on September 15th… which is also a Sunday. Instead, I guess they decided to get it out of the way and do it today, which I personally appreciate.
With that out of the way, what do I think about these picks? Well, although I’d like to see Discover be a bit more creative, I can’t argue with success. Thus, I think keeping Amazon and Target as the bonus categories for a quarter that covers the holiday shopping season will be beneficial to many cardholders (myself included).
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