Zero Financial up to 3% cashback card

Introduction

This post will be a BLATANT post for referrals.  You know it.  I know it.  My dog knows it.  BUT HEAR ME OUT!  At least it’s not a crap referral for the new SPG cards, right?  Anyway, DOC posted about this last week and I finally got around to signing up for the card after lots of discussion with some readers.

 

How does this thing work?

From what we’ve deduced, the card works like a credit card that earns rewards [but acts like a debit card] meaning you’ll link your checking account to the card and each time you swipe the card, you’ll earn your tiered reward structure and it’ll deduct the charge from your bank account.  It sounds kind of like the Target Red debit card if you have one of those.  I’m not sure if the 3% will be applied when they sweep your checking account – say you swipe $100, do they only deduct $97 (sounds too good to be true – what if you return?) or is it like a shopping portal where you have a “credit” on your account that you can transfer to your checking account or redeem for stupid gift cards :facepalm:.

 

Shutdown risk

I’m not so much worried about Zero shutting me down.  This is assuming there won’t be a hard pull and show up on my CR, so if they shut me down, it’d be like Serve shutting me down.  My bigger concern will be the numerous large transactions with my credit union.  Can you imagine seeing multiple $2K and $2.5K transactions in your checking account daily?  Exactly.  I’d be worried about my bank shutting me down before Zero.  With that said though, this is why we have a lot of CU accounts right?

If Zero is paying out 3% and collecting only say 2% on swipes, as you can see, they won’t last long.  Of course they are banking on the huge number of people who won’t make it to the 2% tier to pay for the people on the 3% tier.  I have a feeling heavy 3% people will get the axe shortly (kinda like how people abuse Comcast’s unlimited plan.) I think them giving people 3% out of the gate could be a mistake.  They would need to have lots of cash on hand to withstand all the 3% charges before they make money on the 1% people.  So we’ll see.  This’ll be interesting.  Remember the Diner’s Club card?

 

Sign up

If you want to sign up for the card, which I highly suggest you do, you can use my referral link – zerofinancial.com/EARLY4979.  Then get your FB or Twitter friends to sign up too so you can reach the 3% status and make $100 while you’re at it (although they will need to actually get the card and make 2 charges on it.)  Let’s hope they don’t pull a Coinbase on us either.

Hey whatever happened with Stratos?  

 

My dog meets iPhone 7

Speaking of my dog, check out the new iPhone 7 ‘depth effect.’  The camera now saves 2 photos and you can see the original photo vs the new photo with bokeh.  I’m digging it.  If you want to get it, sign up for the free beta program from Apple.