Important Things To Know About Bank of America Credit Cards

Bank of America is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small- and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. Being such an renowned established credit card issuer, we decided to give you a list of what we think are important things to know about Bank of America’s Credit Cards.

Editor’s Note: If you are interested in more Bank of America Bank Deals, Bonuses, and Promotions, see our compiled list of Bank of America Deals here.

Things to Know

1. There is no limit on the amount of Bank of America credit cards you have. Most card issuers will set a limit on how many cards you can get approved for and open with them, but they do not have that requirement. You can have as many credit cards as you want as long as you’re approved. Sometimes they will automatically reallocate credit limits from existing cards to approve you. However, some people are being limited to four cards.
2. You can view your pre-approved and targeted credit card offers online. At times, they send or have more than one version of a credit card bonus (aside from the public one). You may view these offers online through credit card websites such as ours. We recommend to check regularly since these kind of offers don’t tend to last long.
3. You can check your application status with Bank of America online. When signing up for a new card, you will have the option to see your status and know exactly where you stand with the application.
4. If you apply for a Bank of America card(s) and you are denied, you can still be re-considered. If you are denied when applying for a Citi credit card(s), call their re-consideration line.
5. If you apply for multiple Bank of America cards, the hard inquiries will be combined. If you apply for more than one American Express card and your applications are approved on the same day, all of the hard inquiries will be combined. This will then be considered as a single inquiry. The catch though is that you can only apply for one credit card per day, so the key to this is to to add in charge cards to be successful. There is a possibility that you can mix both business and personal card applications.
6. You may receive an inferior offer instead of being denied. A lot of the Bank of America credit cards have different tier levels associated with them (e.g Signature, Platinum, Secured). For instance, if you’re not approved for the Signature card, then they might approve you for the Platinum card instead that will have a lower sign up bonus.
7. There’s a possibility to churn Bank of America cards, if you choose to do so. In the past, you were not required to have waiting period in between card applications, but like other credit card issuers, this has now become more strict.
8. For Alaska cards, they will give you the credit card number instantly, upon approval of the card. They do this to allow you to use it immediately online if you need to make purchases immediately.
9. When your card is activated, that is when the period will start for you to meet your minimum spend requirement. It is based on billing cycles.
10. Bank of America will often waive the annual fee on your card, but you must ask. We recommend calling their retention department to ask about waiving the fee after the annual fee is posted to your account. When your card has been open for 180 days (or 180 days after the annual fee posts in the second year and onward) call them again to try to earn free points/miles.
11. You have the ability to request a sign-up bonus match. If you see a higher sign-up bonus, you can be asked to matched that. Bank of America will usually match you to the higher bonus amount if they see that it hasn’t been too long of a time period between your application/approval and when you request the match.
12. A credit limit increase request will may result in a hard pull. Typically, if a credit limit increase request is made, it will result in a soft pull for some issuers, but here it will most likely be a hard pull. This could be an inconvenience for those who need a larger credit line extended to them to make purchases.
13. Bank of America will report your credit utilization as what shows on your statement balance. So, pay off your balance off earlier if you need to lower your credit utilization for FICO score purposes.
14. If a credit card has been closed out, it can be re-instated upon request after being closed. If the card was closed by mistake or for a short time period, you could be able to convince them to re-open it for up to six months, but it will require a hard pull.
15. You can get a refund if you cancel your card. If you cancel your credit card within 30 days of account opening, Bank of America will refund the annual fee. This seems to depend your banking history with Bank of America though.
16. Re-allocation of your credit limits with Citi is considered a soft pull.
17. Their business credit cards don’t get reported to the personal credit bureaus. This can be useful in keeping your credit report cleaner.
18. Bank of America will expedite your card if you have a valid reason.
19. You can downgrade your Bank of America credit cards. Now that the better balance rewards card is no longer available there isn’t that many good options.
20. Bank of America no longer offers a referral program to card members.
21. Bank of America will sometimes pull a different credit bureau if you have one or more of them frozen. This seems to vary.
22. They allow you to change the statement closing date on your account. You just are required to call the number on the back of your credit card, but you can not use this feature to expedite bonus points/miles postings.

If you are interested in learning more about credit cards or want to find the best credit cards currently being offered, check out our list of the best credit card bonuses.