Why does Discover make you "sign up" for the 5% cash back categories every 3 months?

[Anonymous]

Why is it that Discover requires you to "sign up" every 3 months for the current 5% rebate categories? 

[Anonymous]

This is going to be an extremely wild guess but, I think the reason behind that is the same as the reason behind the mail-in rebate. Not everyone "wants" or "knows" or "feel like" getting a mail-in rebate, as such, the companies save some cash. Samewise, Discover is a great company and many people might be with them just because of that and might not be totally interested on the 5% cashback. If that's the case, Discover is saving some "cash" too taken that they do not sign up.

[Anonymous]

Yes, absent another reasonable explanation, that would be the remaining efault.  But before I assumed that default, I wanted to find out if anyone had an alternative theory or explanation.

[Uborrow-Upay]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This is going to be an extremely wild guess but, I think the reason behind that is the same as the reason behind the mail-in rebate. Not everyone "wants" or "knows" or "feel like" getting a mail-in rebate, as such, the companies save some cash. Samewise, Discover is a great company and many people might be with them just because of that and might not be totally interested on the 5% cashback. If that's the case, Discover is saving some "cash" too taken that they do not sign up.

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+1

Sounds about right, to me anyways. 

[Anonymous]

Another minor reason might be that it allows the customer to confirm or update their current email address ...