With Cash + 5% cashback 3 useful categories,- bill pay, airline and home improvement, going away shortly, this card will become like any other vanilla card in the market and will change status from being my primary card to never used card.
I had opened platinum checking account with the bank only because I liked this card. I wanted to increase association with US bank and was about transfer $25,000 investments from other banks to US bank to waive about $20 monthly fee for platinum checking account.
All this will change because of changes in 5% categories of cash + card. It is not be worth considering continuing platinum checking with proposed category changes.
So far, I have not received formal communication from bank. They could have considered max quarterly limit or annual fee or requiring banking accounts with them instead of sweeping changes to popular categories.
There are plenty of alternatives but I will need to use one card for each category to maximize 5% cash back. As regards to bill payment, I considering to get TD bank cash rewards card which will give 5% promotional cash back on dining, grocery and gas purchases as well as cable, phone and utility bill payments