U.S. Bank Confirms Further Changes to Smartly Card, Now Affecting Existing Cardholders

The launch of the U.S. Bank Smartly™ Visa Signature^® Card was met with plenty of excitement, thanks to its ability to earn up to an industry-leading 4% cash-back on all purchases with a $0 annual fee.

Then, less than 6 months after its initial launch, U.S. Bank made some sweeping changes to the card that make it a shell of its former self and, frankly, no longer worth considering.

Luckily, when we covered those changes back in April, existing cardholders were excluded. Unfortunately, U.S. Bank is now making changes for cardholders who opened their accounts prior to April 2025.

Here’s a look at the changes to the U.S. Bank Smartly card and why they’re happening now.

U.S. Bank Smartly Card Changes

As a refresher, here is how the cash-back earnings on the U.S. Bank Smartly card worked previously.

All cardholders could earn unlimited 2% cash-back on all purchases, with the ability to boost this cash-back rate depending on the amount of deposits you hold with U.S. Bank according to the following structure:

• Earn a 25% bonus, boosting your cash-back rate to 2.5% on all purchases, with a qualifying balance between $5,000 to $49,999
• Earn a 50% bonus, boosting your cash-back rate to 3% on all purchases, with a qualifying balance between $50,000 to $99,999
• Earn a 75% bonus, boosting your cash-back rate to 4% on all purchases, with a qualifying balance of $100,000 or more

Further, your average daily combined qualifying balances could come from various accounts, including checking and savings accounts, money market accounts, CDs, IRAs, and more.

Now as of April 14, 2025, here’s what the card will offer moving forward:

• Previously, you needed a $5,000 combined average balance in order to qualify for the 2.5% rewards; now, that has been increased to $10,000.
• The older version of the card used a combined balance calculation on a 90-day average; now, that has been changed to a 30-day average.
• Previously, there were no spending limits on how much cash-back you could earn; now, your cash-back rewards on the 2.5%, 3%, and 4% rates are limited to $10,000 in spend per billing cycle, and all spending beyond that will earn 2% cash-back.
• The new version of the card now excludes tax payments, business-to-business purchases, insurance, education/tuition, third-party bill payments, and direct-selling gift card sites from earning boosted cash-back rewards. These purchases will earn a maximum of 2% back.
• Lastly, only checking account balances will count toward the bonus rewards tiers. Funds that you have in your savings and brokerage accounts with U.S. Bank will no longer qualify.

That last point drastically limits the usefulness of the U.S. Bank Smartly card going forward. It makes little sense to keep $50,000, or even $100,000+, in a checking account earning a paltry interest rate just to earn 3% or 4% cash-back on up to $10,000 in purchases each month.

Changes for Existing Cardholders

When the U.S. Bank Smartly card changed its structure back in April, this only applied to new applicants opening an account after that date. Now, existing cardholders are affected by these changes.

Not all cardholders have received communications directly, so it’s worth calling the number on the back of your card to ask for this information in writing.

However, some cardholders are receiving notifications that their card will change on September 15, 2025. A spokesperson for U.S. Bank confirmed these changes via email:

We are making slight adjustments to the Smartly Visa Rewards program for cardholders who applied before April 14, 2025, primarily to adjust the cash back bonus on certain categories to 2% and the earning bonus on spend above $10,000 per billing cycle to 2%. Beyond that, their original terms and conditions will remain unchanged. The changes are effective as of September 15, 2025.

Emailed statement from a spokesperson

Why are these changes happening now?

U.S. Bank launched the smartly card in September 2024. Thus, implementing changes for existing cardholders in September of 2025 gives the issuer 1 year from launch to implement the final round of changes. The Credit CARD Act of 2009 requires card issuers to give at least 45 days’ notice to any major changes for existing cardholders and must allow affected account holders to cancel their card in that period without any penalty.

While the act doesn’t specifically prohibit changes to the rewards program of a card during the first year, it’s often understand that substantial changes to a card during this period might border on violating the contract established with the account holder, so banks tend to avoid overhauls in the first year.

Final Thoughts

To be fair to U.S. Bank, you could argue that the card was overly generous at its launch and therefore unsustainable, but now it seems it has swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.

The upcoming changes to the U.S. Bank Smartly card will now affect existing cardholders, and many of them are sure to be upset after they were grandfathered into the changes back in April but are now learning they’ll be affected in September. Come September, this card will be much different than it looked on the launch date a year prior.