Knowledge Hub · Glossary
Welcome Bonus
A welcome bonus is the lump of points a credit card awards after you open it and meet a set amount of spending within a window. It is usually the largest single chunk of points a card ever hands out. For most people, welcome bonuses are the fastest way to build a meaningful balance.
What it means in practice
The bonus comes with a requirement, often a minimum spend over the first few months. Hit it and the points post; miss it and you get nothing but the everyday earn rate. So the bonus is only real if the spend fits what you would buy anyway.
Welcome bonuses are also why a balance can appear large and fresh out of nowhere. Several cards opened over a year can stack into hundreds of thousands of points, which is exactly the kind of balance people later look to redeem or sell.
Example
A card might offer 80,000 points after you spend 4,000 dollars in the first three months, turning normal spending into a balance worth roughly 800 dollars or more.
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