2021 Blue Cash Preferred Review

Blue Cash Preferred Review Summary

The Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express is an elite everyday rewards credit card, giving up to 6% cash back in some of the most popular consumer spending categories. In addition to high ongoing rewards rates, Blue Cash Preferred offers a $250 initial bonus for spending $1,000 during the first 3 months.

Blue Cash Preferred has financing chops, too, offering 0% introductory interest rates on new purchases for the first 12 months. But it does come at a cost, charging a $95 annual fee. This steep fixed cost means that the Blue Cash Preferred® Card is ill-suited to someone who infrequently pays with plastic, as it would be difficult to earn enough rewards to cover the annual fee. But if you’re prepared to make it your primary spending vehicle, and groceries and gas are among your biggest expenses, then Blue Cash Preferred® certainly warrants a closer look.

And though it’s not necessarily an offer to seek out for financing purposes, it’s far from a liability and actually lends itself quite well to helping you both earn rewards and avoid interest on a big-ticket purchase that will take more than a few months to pay off.

We’ll take a closer look at the ins and outs of this offer below, in addition to seeing how the Blue Cash Preferred® Card compares to its no annual fee sibling, Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express.

Blue Cash Preferred Highlights

$250 Initial Bonus

Spending at least $1,000 during the first 3 months that you have the Blue Cash Preferred® Card will earn you a $250 statement credit. That’s more than the average initial cash-back bonus, according to WalletHub’s latest Credit Card Landscape Report.

Up To 6% Cash Back

At 6%, Blue Cash Preferred’s maximum cash-back earning rate certainly is high. This rate applies to U.S. streaming subscriptions and U.S. supermarkets, for the first $6,000 in supermarket purchases you make each year. When you factor in the 3% cash back earned at gas stations and on transit, as well as the 1% cash back you’ll get everywhere else, the average person is looking at earning roughly $1,250 over the first two years of use, after subtracting the annual fee and assuming they manage to spend the full $6,000 at supermarkets.

By the way, superstores, warehouse stores and wholesale clubs (e.g., Costco, Walmart and Target) do not qualify as supermarkets or gas stations.

Blue Cash Preferred Lowlights

$95 Annual Fee

The Blue Cash Preferred® Card’s most glaring weakness is the fact that it takes from you. Sure, the rewards that you stand to earn will help you quickly recoup your investment in this plastic, but you’re still paying nearly 5 times more than the average credit card charges. That’s what prevents applying for this card from being a no-brainer.

Average APR

If you get approved for Blue Cash Preferred®, you will be assigned an APR that could be 13.99% - 23.99% (V), depending on your exact creditworthiness. The high end of this range is roughly the same as the average for “fair-credit” credit cards, according to WalletHub Landscape Reports. The result is plastic that will prove quite expensive if you carry a balance from month to month.

Other Things To Consider

• Free ShopRunner Membership: Your Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express scores you free two-day shipping for items purchased through the service, which offers products from more than 140 stores and thousands of brands. You can sign up for the benefit here. Ordinarily, a ShopRunner membership will cost you $79 per year.

• 2.7% Foreign Transaction Fee: American Express already has one strike against it when it comes to international spending, as its cards are accepted in fewer countries than Visa and Mastercard. The fact that it charges a fee equal to 2.7% of any purchase made outside of the U.S., whether you’re traveling abroad or just shopping from an internationally based merchant, is strike number two. It is higher than the 1.5% market-average foreign transaction fee and a deal breaker for any frequent traveler.

• No Annual Fee For Authorized Users: Some rewards cards charge annual fees to authorized users in recognition of the fact that they have the same earning privileges as primary accountholders and should thus foot some of the bill. Blue Cash Preferred® is not among them. You can add an unspecified number of authorized users, whose spending will yield rewards for you, without paying extra. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should rush to add authorized users, as doing so still poses distinct risks, but it’s certainly a feature worth knowing about.

Blue Cash Preferred vs. The Competition