American Express Gives the Blue Cash Everyday Credit Card a Revamp

The Blue Cash Everyday Card from American Express has long been a decent option for supermarket and gas station purchases, particularly for consumers who prefer no annual fee. Today, American Express announced significant improvements to the card, including adjustments to its bonus rewards categories and new monthly benefits.

What to Expect With the New-and-Improved Blue Cash Everyday

The Blue Cash Everyday Card has always offered decent rewards, but it’s never stood out, especially compared to its sister card, the Blue Cash Preferred Card, which has an annual fee but offers enough value to easily make up for it for many cardholders.

But now, the Blue Cash Everyday offers outsized value that’s difficult to ignore.

New Rewards Structure

Previously, the card offered 3% cash back on up to $6,000 spent at U.S. supermarkets each calendar year (then 1%), as well as 2% back at U.S. gas stations and select U.S. department stores, and 1% back on everything else.

Now, the card offers the following:

• 3% cash back on up to $6,000 spent each calendar year at U.S. supermarkets (then 1%).
• 3% cash back on up to $6,000 spent each calendar year on U.S. online retail purchases (then 1%).
• 3% cash back on up to $6,000 spent each calendar year at U.S. gas stations (then 1%).
• 1% cash back on all other purchases.

While cardholders lose bonus cash back for select department store purchases, they can easily make up for that with the increased rate for U.S. gas station purchases and the new bonus rate for U.S. online retail purchases.

The only downside is that American Express hasn’t expanded its redemption options. While there’s no minimum redemption amount, your only option is a statement credit.

New Benefits

The improvements American Express made to the card’s rewards program are impressive on their own, but many cardholders may end up getting a lot more value out of the card’s new benefits:

• Home Chef credit: Cardholders can get up to $180 each calendar year in credits on online meal kit purchases from Home Chef in increments of up to $15 per month.
• Disney Bundle credit: You’ll get up to $84 in statement credits each calendar year when you spend $13.99 or more each month on an eligible subscription to the Disney bundle, which includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN+. That comes out to $7 in statement credits each month.

In total, you could get up to $264 each year in value from these two perks alone. That said, the statement credits aren’t enough to cover your full monthly subscription with either provider. So, if you’re not already paying for these subscriptions, it might make sense to use the card to get a monthly discount, but you shouldn’t sign up for them just because your card offers statement credits.