Atmos Rewards Summit Card 3x Points On Foreign Purchases: Any Catch?

Great for expats… so expect this to be nerfed or capped at some point. Take advantage of this while you can.

You get more than 3x of your have high tier with BoA, you get eqm with Alaska and you get the 100k companion voucher assume you spend.

Excellent card, specifically for 3.1x foreign (with 10% bonus), and 3x rent via BILT up to $50K (especially when working towards the 100K Global Certificate). I just hope BofA/BILT/Alaska doesn't nerf or devalue anything anytime soon.

The exchange rate is very bad for Atmos... before you swipe your card and make sure it is good compared with other 2x Capital one etc.

The 3x is working smoothly for me now. Valuable on booking foreign tours, especially. It got off to a rocky start, though, with BoA refusing foreign charges (?!?). After enough complaining, they started letting me actually use the card, online and abroad. It’s enough to have me keeping the card another year. If the CSR had kept the 3x on general travel spend, I wouldn’t keep the Summit after the SUB year.

I buy a lot of ex-EU tickets paid for in Euros, and it is working well for me. I expect it will be capped next year to 10,000 extra points due to abuse or a workaround that results in some folks manufacturing 100s of thousands of points.

Excellent card for Canadians who are into US credit cards. Especially if they like to fly porter.

Porter is awesome. No middle seats.

I'm the guys living in Europe quoted in the article. I do have this card, and it is indeed very valuable for me 🙂

Unrelated to the article, but Ben could you make a post describing your travel gear? What carry on/personal item do you use, what and how you pack in it, essentials you carry with you, how you use and store your stuff in business class seats in flight, etc. Curious to hear your professional input on this and hear other frequent travelers as well, as I am currently window shopping for travel gear. Thank you!

The only real catch is that when it comes time to redeem your points, you'll only see phantom space on your Atmos search results.

Question for our Canadian buddies (if we still have any left): Do your grocery stores sell gift cards like their US-based counterparts do? Are those the same familiar Visa and Mastercard gift cards we see in US stores?

Asking for a friend who lives near the border...

Precisely why I don’t collect Atmos points.

Yes, they do, however, in most cases gift cards and the like are not usable across the border, so Canadian gift cards generally need to be used in Canadian stores/sites

I have used it extensively in Canada and occasionally in other countries and all exchange rates have been pretty much wholesale and better than I can get from exchange places like Wise

3.3 foreign on every transaction I have had with it.

This is essentially a 5x per dollar spent for expats who spend $60k per year on the card. I only put foreign spend (split time between USA and Argentina) and restaurants on the card and it's been a total game changer.

Has anyone been approved for both the summit and the ascent card with in short period, say two months?

I was recently approved for the ascent and I'm considering the summit as well. I'm not quite as high on it as Ben but I'm be spending much the next year abroad and an incremental and the 3x is pretty sweet and the sub pretty sweet

Expat based in Indonesia. Loving this card, watching the points add up each month (on track to hit 60K spend this year). The exchange rates used by BoA have been good, no issues. I do expect this perk to end sometime but will continue to use until it does. Great card.

Canadian practioners generally don't "buy cards". The people I know typically pay with crredit cards, to reload a reloadable "card" that has a BillPay function. I don't know anyone who buys actual cards.

lol off topic but it will be interesting to see how UA's MAGA bet plays out for IAD now that antifascists have full control of VA

Great take, Ben! The only card I think that could come close is the Bilt Palladium card when you consider monthly transfer bonuses (up to 125%!). One article I'd love to see (particularly for nomads, long-term travellers, and expats) is everything you know about *not getting shut down*: banks, brokerages, credit cards, cellular providers, or a combination of the above. I travel internationally for long periods of time, and while I have all accounts set to use my residential address in the U.S., I always have a latent worry that I'll be shut down. My biggest concern is that my extended credit/debit card use abroad could trigger termination of my brokerage account(s) at that same institution. I've heard (maybe true, maybe not) horror stories of brokerages liquidating taxable accounts, triggering taxable gains, and mailing a check to the address on file. Could you imagine how bad that would be? The horror!

I have the card and have used it for foreign purchases but was caught up when I booked hotel nights and flights from Agoca, which I thought was a foreign purchase but was billed through a subsidiary in the U.S. so I didn't receive the bonus.

Do not agree, here.
When searching for international flights (via seats.aero followed by Alaska) I always find a lot of flights for booking through Alaska and, in addition, in most cases for less miles/points compared to other frequent flyer programs.

Do not agree, here.
When searching for international flights (via seats.aero followed by Alaska) I always find a lot of flights for booking through Alaska and, in addition, in most cases for less miles/points compared to other frequent flyer programs.

Please provide data points for this statement. Thanks.

One important nuance is that although many regions around the world impose interchange fee caps, those caps generally do not apply to U.S.-issued cards. (Fees still tend to be lower outside of the U.S., however.)

It is entirely possible that 3x (or 3.3x) on foreign purchases will turn out to be an unsustainable perk because it does not align with the underlying unit economics of a foreign purchase. However, the same could be said of 5x on airline purchases (Platinum Card) or 4x on hotels (CSR). In general cards offer generous bonus categories and accept that, for certain customers, they may not recover the full costs of doing so.

As someone living in Europe, I am certainly maximizing this very unique and rewarding bonus category.

I have lived abroad for 10+ years and I have yet to have a single card shut down (nor because of travel patterns nor because of other reasons). In some years I do not make a single physical purchase in the U.S. on certain cards. But I think it is wise to separate as much as possible between issuers your 1) credit cards 2) checking accounts 3) brokerage accounts.

Even better!

I'm not clear whether a foreign transaction in a restaurant gets both the 3x bonus + the 3x dining bonus? If double-dipping a thing?

Just returned from Japan trip and used the Atmos card there for 8 days…. Had $20k in charges and received 60k in my Atmos account the next billing cycle. No brainer