Don’t throw it in the trash though. It’s plastic, right? That’s recyclable.
Anyways, the Uber card, which was previously one of the better no-annual-fee credit cards, is now fairly useless due to how the rewards changed. It’s now a 5-3-1 rewards structure: 5% on Uber purchases (e.g. your standard Uber rides, but also Uber Eats and Jump bikes/scooters), 3% on hotels, airfare, and dining, and 1% on everything else. Both online purchases and dining lose 1% of rewards in order for Uber products to gain 3%. They’re also killing off the $50 subscription bonus. How the math works out depends on your personal spending profile and what other credit cards you have (for example, I don’t care about the rewards reduction in online purchases, since all my online purchases go on a different card), but I’d wager it’s going to be net negative for most people.
The real problem is that you’re not getting true cash back. You’re getting Uber cash, which could be nice if you use Uber and Uber Eats a ton, but US Dollars are accepted at far more places than Uber Cash. Uber is essentially trying to lock you into their ecosystem of services - and honestly, it’s a fairly smart business move, since most people aren’t going to cancel their credit cards over this, and many people will start to use more and more Uber services.
For what it’s worth, the transition isn’t immediate. I got an email today saying that the old rewards structure would stay in place until February. Maybe that’ll change
So, what do i do with my card?
Suppose that the card is actually functionally dead for you - you don’t plan on using it anymore. Should you cancel your card? Should you cut it up and throw it in the recycling bin? For the latter: yes, if you’re seriously committed to never using the Uber card anymore, go ahead and cut up into several pieces (and don’t forget to make sure the chip is cut into pieces also).
That said, you probably shouldn’t cancel it. There’s no annual fee to the new Uber card, so it won’t cost you anything to continue having the credit card on your credit report. Cancelling a credit card will probably harm three factors that play into your credit score:
credit utilization
Basically, the percentage of available credit that you use each month. As an example, let’s suppose that you spend $600 each month on your credit cards, and like a responsible credit user, you pay off your bills at the end of each month. If you have 2 cards, each with a $2,000 limit, you’re using 15% of your total available credit (you have $4,000 of credit available; $600 is 15% of $4,000). If you cancel one of your cards, you’d now be using 30% of your credit (you have $2,000 of credit available; $600 is 30% of $2,000). Higher credit utilization is worse.
This won’t be as important if you already have a ton of credit available. Going from 3% to 5% utilization isn’t going to affect anything; and realistically you could always just pay off your bills twice a month to avoid any harm.
Number of total accounts
If you close an account, you’ll have fewer open accounts. This means fewer data points for lenders to use, which harms your credit score. That said, this isn’t the most important factor in your credit score, so preserving this isn’t all that important.
average age of accounts
Depending on how long you’ve had the Uber card for, your average age of accounts (AAoA) may increase or decrease. I’ve only had my Uber card for 7 months, which is shorter than my AAoA. As a result, closing my account would increase my AAoA (which is actually good for credit score). However, if you’re thinking about closing an account that has been open longer than your average account, know that that’ll probably hurt your credit score in the short term.
I used Mint to access the age of all of my accounts. The Uber Card shows up as “BRCLYSBANKDE”.
With all of that said, a few points on your credit score won’t matter all that much. Whether you keep the Uber card or get rid of it should really only depend on how much you’d be able to use Uber Cash like cash.
alternatives to the uber card
Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of no-annual-fee credit-cards great for dining and travel the same way that the old Uber card was. A friend recommended the Wells Fargo Propel Card as a solid alternative. While it’s only 3% back on dining, it preserves the 3% on hotels and airfare, and adds several other 3% categories (gas, transit, car rentals, and streaming services, among others). There’s no 2% category for online purchases - the base earning rate is 1% for other purchases. Apparently, the card is metal (something I’ll confirm in a few weeks once my friend gets his in the mail). The only downside I can see to the card so far is that it’s unclear how non-Wells-Fargo-customers can redeem points - while I’d imagine that it’s possible to redeem points for a statement credit, I haven’t seen anything that confirms this hunch. My personal views on Wells Fargo don’t help convince me.
Beyond the Propel card, there are plenty of cards that offer 3% on restaurants: the CapitalOne SavorOne card comes to mind, or if you’re well-off enough to the point where you have cash lying around and are a Bank of America customer, the Bank of America Cash Rewards can be pretty solid (though you need at least $20,000 for the first bump in rewards). Honestly, though, I just don’t know that it’s worth getting these cards if you already have something that gets you 2% back across the board (e.g. the Citi Double Cash). 3% isn’t bad, but it’s only a 1% improvement over baseline that makes me question the value of the marginal rewards.
If you’re willing to pay an annual fee, the American Express Gold Card and Green Card seem attractive, but then you’re earning points without a straightforward cash back system. Even with The Points Guy’s valuation of 2 cents per point, you’re still looking at a fairly high breakeven point versus something like a Citi Double Cash, and that’s assuming (1) that you can get maximum redemption value, and (2) you’re willing to deal with putting in the effort to do that.
It’s probably best to just suck it up, and accept the fact that the Uber card is soon-to-be irrelevant.