Very Good News For US Bank Cash + card members from April 2013

[nishant1]

Many of members of Cash + were sad about US bank bill pay going away from 1 st April 2013.

There is a silver lining to those changes.

Here is what you do to know from your online account to find out  how the changes can will help you more than what you expected.

1) Select "Download Transaction Data" from left hand menu. You can download last 3 months of credit card data.

2) Select Excel option and open the excel file.

3) Look at column titled "Memo". The last four digits in this field is MCC- Merchant category code which decides whether your merchant is 5% cash back or not.

4) All the transactions which had MCC of any of 4812, 4814 or 4899 will continue to be eligible for 5% cash back from 1st Apr 2013 under cell phone category.

5) When I checked my transactions and find that Dish Network, Comcast, AT&T internet will all continue to qualify for 5% category under New category - Cell Phone.

Bottom line is Cell phone category is a must for most of us to be continued.

Please share your data for which additional merchants you find under above 3 categories from 1 Apr 2013

[JonStur]

Yea, I'm still bummed about my elec, gas and water bills, car note, etc. These things added up very quickly. But alas, beggars cant be choosers I guess..

[nishant1]

I agree. We lost bill pay big time.  Lost home and car insurance as well in addition to utilities

However, we were expecting cell phones only but it is good to know that  internet and satellite TV bill will be covered as well from 1 April 2013.

Which part of the half glass you look at matters in such case.

[ztnjpv]

Still bummed. I have the Chase Ink for that stuff/

Electric, gas, water, insurance?? Gone. Big money for me. :-(

[bs6054]

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@nishant1 wrote:

Many of members of Cash + were sad about US bank bill pay going away from 1 st April 2013.

There is a silver lining to those changes.

Here is what you do to know from your online account to find out  how the changes can will help you more than what you expected.

1) Select "Download Transaction Data" from left hand menu. You can download last 3 months of credit card data.

2) Select Excel option and open the excel file.

3) Look at column titled "Memo". The last four digits in this field is MCC- Merchant category code which decides whether your merchant is 5% cash back or not.

4) All the transactions which had MCC of any of 4812, 4814 or 4899 will continue to be eligible for 5% cash back from 1st Apr 2013 under cell phone category.

5) When I checked my transactions and find that Dish Network, Comcast, AT&T internet will all continue to qualify for 5% category under New category - Cell Phone.

Bottom line is Cell phone category is a must for most of us to be continued.

Please share your data for which additional merchants you find under above 3 categories from 1 Apr 2013

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That is better news.  Where did you find out the which MCCs will be covered?  From a rep?  Couldn't see it on the site.

[Gharlane]

It doesn't answer the question of which MCC codes fall into which Cash+ category, but here's the list of MCC codes:

http://usa.visa.com/download/corporate/resources/mcc_booklet.pdf

[YahComb]

how did you find out some internet/TV utilities might qualigy also-i'd understand if they called the category "telecommunications" but they said straight up cell phones. I can see if they fall under 4812 and 4814, but how are you certain 4899 will qualify too?

[bs6054]

OP, didn't see a response!   How did you find this out?  Need to know if the info is good...

[Anonymous]

I sent U.S. Bank an email requesting clarification and received this response:

We received your inquiry regarding which merchant category codes cell phone companies fall under. Unfortunately, U.S. Bank does not have the ability to control how a merchant chooses to classify their business and therefore reserves the right to determine which purchases qualify for allowance. Currently, the MCC/SIC codes are the following for Cell Phones: 4812, 4814, 4899. Transactions that are classified outside of these codes will not receive a 5% cash back bonus, however they will still receive 1% cash back.

[Quips]

When I downloaded my transactions - Direct TV, Comcast  and Verizon Internet /home phone were under 4899. Verizon Wireless was 4814. That is good news if that continues as I wasn't expecting Direct TV to be included with cell phones. Although 1 peculiar thing showed up - my Jan transaction for Verizon Wireless showed up as 4899 - but in Feb it showed up as 4814 - so hopefully they don't mess with the merchant codes.