Show HN: I built a tool to manage and compare credit card rewards

This is a free tool that helps you manage and visualize your credit card rewards across different categories.

You can input the cards in your wallet and see how they complement each other, spot gaps in your setup, and also see the best card to use for a given merchant.

I’m also a founder at OneCard, where we’re building a smart card that’ll eventually handle all of this automatically, routing each purchase to the best card in real-time.

Would love feedback from the HN community!

rewards.getonecard.io

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87 points

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jsh1

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8 days ago

74 comments

lxgr ・ 8 days ago

Don’t make me input things without telling me that I’ll need a login to see the result.

Requiring account creation upfront is fair; this is a very unpleasant dark pattern preying on the sunk cost fallacy.

  • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

    I totally hear you! We looked at the comments here and are going to make a lot of the features on the product available without account creation! Appreciate the feedback

    • RamblingCTO ・ 8 days ago

      Be careful to not overfit to HN comments if they're not your target audience though! Sometimes the vibe is "I don't wanna pay for stuff and I can build that myself" and that probably isn't your target audience

      • lxgr ・ 7 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        My complaint isn't about having to pay, it's about not knowing upfront whether I will.

        • RamblingCTO ・ 6 days ago

          And that's totally valid, I agree 100%. Show me what I get and I'll happily pay

    • lxgr ・ 7 days ago

      To be clear, it's totally fair to require account creation – data and customer relationships are currencies too, after all – in my view. (I might personally choose to not use it then, and that's just as fair.)

      I'd just have liked to know about it before selecting a few of my cards, which took me a minute or so. That's too much time/effort to get nothing in return.

      • alex-onecard ・ 3 days ago

        Thank you for the comment - based on your feedback we have enhanced a bit the experience for users without logging in.

        Now on the landing page users are able to input cards to their liking and compare them at different vendors/categories to determine the best card without login.

fn42 ・ 8 days ago

Interesting idea, thanks for sharing.

Some feedback from using:

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at costco, but costco only accepts visa

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at harbor freight but this card only gets 1% at this store, the BofA customized cash rewards (added to my wallet) is the only card I have found that gives 3% back on home improvement stores

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at BJ's, even though the BJ's rewards card is in my wallet which gives 5% back at this store

  • bdangubic ・ 8 days ago

    the tool is sponsored by amex blue :)

    • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

      I wish lol currently not sponsored by anyone

  • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

    These are all interesting data points that we are going to look into and once we get it right I’ll be sure to let you know! Thank you so much for the feedback

pimlottc ・ 8 days ago

What "AI" is involved in this? It's mostly just a few database lookups based on merchant name and/or category, isn't it? Or is that just marketing gloss, because everything is "AI" now?

  • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

    To be honest I totally forgot we left it there. We did have an AI feature baked in that we feature flagged because we wanted to get the core functionality right.

    Sorry for misleading you but I think the AI feature we have planned will be worth it

    • pimlottc ・ 7 days ago

      Well, if you're not using AI right now, you should remove that text from your website.

KeepFlying ・ 8 days ago

I can't find my Amazon Prime rewards card in your search, any chance it's in there under a different name?

And for my Discover It card a tool like this is t very useful unless it can handle the rotating reward category (I think one of the Chase freedom cards also has a similar program).

I can easily remember most of my static rewards categories, but managing the rotating categories is harder and is where a tool like this would help me best.

  • internetter ・ 8 days ago

    Also, many cards have temporary bonuses, like the Savor's previous 10% Uber promo. If they can handle this, thats huge.

david422 ・ 8 days ago

Ugggh, credit card rewards. We all pay higher prices on goods because of the fees credit cards charge merchants, and then can get "rewarded" some of that money back. No thanks.

  • ostensible ・ 8 days ago

    You either play that game or subside others who do, regardless of of whether you like it or not — you are still participating. Prices are already higher for everyone.

    • eldaisfish ・ 8 days ago

      There’s a much better option. Cap the card transaction fees by offering a public alternative.

      • hakfoo ・ 7 days ago

        Nationalize the entire circus.

        We should have some form of Faster Payments scheme, backed by the state, because cheap, reliable transaction networks are the sort of infrastructure that's good for business. At the very least, this screams "make FedNow the default payment rail". Then if people actually want to spend money that isn't theirs, let lenders build something pluggable on top, so their costs and needs are solely limited to the credit aspects, rather than skimming of of every single transfer of value.

      • satvikpendem ・ 4 days ago

        Sure, you can wait another decade for that to happen or just play the game for today's money and benefits.

      • scarface_74 ・ 6 days ago

        Yes and just wait for the “public alternative” to play political games with which merchants they accept.

        There is already a low transaction fee network that works over the current infrastructure - debit cards.

  • lxgr ・ 7 days ago

    I also dislike the concept, but whether you personally participate or not doesn't change anything about the underlying game theory causing the emergent phenomenon.

    If you really dislike it, maximize your points and fund a campaign to lower credit card interchange from them :)

  • tiffanyh ・ 8 days ago

    Most of the time, you’re paying the same price even if you use cash.

    • lxgr ・ 7 days ago

      Yes, which is what makes it so bad. Somebody else's cash payment subsidizes my credit card rewards.

    • zeroday28 ・ 8 days ago

      Most places only charge extra fees for credit cards in Japan.

  • scarface_74 ・ 6 days ago

    Accepting and managing cash has costs too - external and employee theft being the main two.

    Every study shows that people on average spend more when they use credit cards. If I owned a business, I wouldn’t accept cash at all.

  • m463 ・ 8 days ago

    That's why lots of smaller/family restaurants are cash only.

    • lxgr ・ 7 days ago

      That probably has at least as much to do with taxes as it has with swipe fees.

muli_d ・ 8 days ago

1. The website looks sleek and has good design.

2. I wish I could get a little bit more of a sneak peek / preview before needing to create an account.

3. Unrelated to the core business of your website, there's a small "bug" in the light/dark theme switch -- the first mouse click doesn't do anything (at least when "system" = "dark"). This is happening because when you launch the site for the first time and the localStorage is "clean", the "theme" value is "system". But clicking the toggle changes the value to "dark", which keeps the current theme as it is.

  • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

    THANK YOU! I’m actually pushing a fix to that right now!

bravura ・ 7 days ago

Recently, I signed up for two premium cards. The main benefit I wanted: Collision and damage coverage on INTERNATIONAL car rentals.

Honest feedback: I logged into your site and found it useless. I plugged in my two cards. Your site gave me such a cursory and incomplete picture of them, I would never have the information I needed.

p.s. they are literally the credit cards you have on your homepage, so I expected at least these to be complete.

  • lxgr ・ 7 days ago

    That's something I also wish existed: A credit card insurance comparison tool.

    Essentially all "travel cards" offer some kind of trip cancellation or interruption insurance, but covered events vary wildly.

    In some, thinks like illness of anybody on the trip is enough (not just the cardholder or immediate family members); in others, the cardholder basically needs to die in a very specific way to be eligible for any type of compensation.

    Proper travel insurance is worth way more than half a percent more in points on domestic rental cars in shades of red to yellow (but not orange!) and grocery stores in states starting with "O" to me.

Henchman21 ・ 8 days ago

What sort of information do you collect on your users? Do you resell their purchase history? Why are you as trustworthy as my bank(s)?

Genuine questions I would need answered before considering this. Super cool idea — but the devil is always in the details!

streptomycin ・ 8 days ago

The small % you get on each purchase is crumbs, but the cookie is the big sign up bonus you can get. For the past several years I've been making about $2k/year from that, which is so much more than the % bonus that I don't know why anyone would care about getting 3% back rather than 2%. Like if you are that worried about your money, take the free $2k first.

  • chrisweekly ・ 8 days ago

    Do you have a system or tool for finding card offers with signup bonuses?

    Also (this is possibly common knowledge but) your credit score is negatively impacted not just by % of available credit utilized, but also by average age of credit accounts. If you're going to want a significant loan (eg a mortgage) in the forseeable future, something to keep in mind.

    • lxm ・ 8 days ago

      There's a bunch of newsletters and blogs advertising those changes, as credit card affiliate programs tend to be generous, especially for driving new sign-ups.

      Not endorsing, but these are the ones my "newsletters" email account subscribes to:

      * https://yourbestcreditcards.com/ for credit card bonuses

      * https://www.frequentflyerbonuses.com/ for hotel, airline and other travel programs

    • johnQdeveloper ・ 8 days ago

      I'm not him but realistically, its a mixture of popular blogs and churning credit card content on social media which is the name some people use for the practice of farming bonuses.

      Credit score is impacted by the average age but tbh, I've gotten two mortgages while doing this and compared the numbers with my peers and it could be my situation is unusual but the "cost" was like .2% APR between those that don't churn in my RL group and those that do.

      It has (in my experience with multiple mortgages) have a rate set by competent use of credit that does not lead you to have much debt but paying regularly in practice regardless of what the public credit score algo is telling people.

    • streptomycin ・ 7 days ago

      I use https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ , manual research (there's only so many credit card companies, doesn't take long to check their websites when you're looking for a new card), and also a decent amount of time the credit card companies send me pre-approved offers in the mail and sometimes they are actually pretty good. US Bank recently sent me one for a $750 bonus!

      Overall Chase business cards seem to usually have the best deals, and they don't require you to have a "real" business to get them.

      It does impact your credit score, so you are correct to be careful if you're going to get a mortgage soon. But in my experience, the effect can't be too big because my credit score is still excellent despite getting a new credit card every couple months.

    • scarface_74 ・ 6 days ago

      Not if you focus on churning business credit cards. You will see a credit inquiry on your personal credit report. But that’s it. The actual credit card doesn’t show up on your credit report and the sign up bonuses are usually higher.

      https://johnnyafrica.com/multiple-chase-ink-business-cards/

      With Amex it’s even better. Once you have one credit card with them, they usually don’t even run a credit report. That means you can then sign up for business credit cards with no effect on your report.

      As far as websites,

      https://www.offeroptimist.com/

    • dev1398 ・ 8 days ago

      That’s one of the first features we are prioritizing after we fix the bugs pointed out here! Also thinking of making our roadmap public of planned features but YES to answer your question yes we do have something set up to fetch the latest offers!

    • ra7 ・ 8 days ago

      r/CreditCards is a good place to find latest offers.

      The current hot offer is the 100k points signup bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

      • satvikpendem ・ 8 days ago

        Yep, reddit is the place to go. For redeeming the points, check out r/awardtravel. Tip, do not use the credit card travel portal to book flights and hotels, you will get lowballed.

dhbanes ・ 8 days ago

I can select Amex plat but not business plat. These cards have materially different benefits and rewards earning structures.

Plus selection first then making me create an account? Feels like a scammy aggregator of some sort (even if it’s not).

Your audience will largely not appreciate the dark pattern.

Just my 2 mr points.

bix6 ・ 8 days ago

Cool idea with the smart card.

Can you tell me when I need to get a new card offering 2.5% instead of 2% and it’s a good relative bonus? Tired of managing things.

Would like to try a simple search as a demo before making an account.

Jaxkr ・ 8 days ago

This is great. I’ve thought about building something like this for myself.

Complaints:

- Discover It rotating categories not factored in. These are 5% and very significant.

- Can’t add Amazon Chase Visa, as someone else pointed out.

Also I would LOVE an iOS shortcut where I can just type in what I’m buying and you categorize it with an LLM and it just tells me what card to use.

ClearAndPresent ・ 8 days ago

Useful idea. I, and many peers, are your target market. However, this looks like it might be US centric, based on searches in the merchant/wallet search on the main page.

Is it? Might be worth mentioning that somewhere so a large international audience doesn't waste time signing up.

robg ・ 8 days ago

Please don’t make me login to see a simple comparison of existing cards. My thought process:

1. Seems interesting, ok, I’ll try to search

2. Login

3. Nope

TSUTiger ・ 8 days ago

How does this compare to something like MaxRewards[0]?

I'd try doing my own due diligence first, but without signing up for an account first, I can't get past the homepage.

[0]: https://maxrewards.com

nailer ・ 7 days ago

I like this tool, and I’ve made an account and entered in all my cards.

But “Highest Rewards by Category” doesn’t quite work because of the truncation of the text. it says “Chase Sap” but I don’t know which sapphire card is that.

clarkdale ・ 8 days ago

It could be factored in, but many restaurants near me add a fee for credit card use, usually 2% but I've seen as high as 3.5%.

The credit card rewards usually still make sense, but sometimes I pay cash even if I might lose 0.5% on it.

Sontho ・ 8 days ago

It will be great if you can work this out without making people logging in.

vzaliva ・ 8 days ago

Here is a type of question I wish your site can help me answer:

Amazon Fresh online purchases : AMEX Gold or Chase Reserve? Format gives 3x reward for groceries but later have a promo (shown on your web site).

  • dev1398 ・ 5 days ago

    I hear you and this is a problem that I currently face as well! We actually source offer data from all the major credit cards and one of the features we are going to implement is to show you offer data next to your optimal card (once we make improvements to our optimal card decision engine)

    The idea is to later incorporate the promo and give you the ultimate best card, something we still need to figure out and perfect but as of now we can show you the best card for groceries and offers on the merchant selected

asdev ・ 8 days ago

Credit cards allow proxying? How will you route it?

  • ceejayoz ・ 8 days ago

    I’ve seen half a dozen startups promise this. None ever really made it into the market. I suspect the chips are a major obstacle (as they’re supposed to be!).

  • barbazoo ・ 8 days ago

    They’re not routing anything atm

nodesocket ・ 8 days ago

I’ve been using the Robinhood Gold card over 6 months and found the unlimited/unrestricted 3% cash back to be nearly unbeatable.

  • ostensible ・ 8 days ago

    Bank of America provides 5.25% percent cash back on each category. Get one for every category. Done. (You need to enroll to preferred rewards for that). 3% is not worth to be bothered about, nor should anyone support robinhood in the first place.

    • nodesocket ・ 8 days ago

      One for every category, not exactly great if you spend frequently. I’ll take free money at 3%, outrage over Robinhood usage is typical (rolling eyes).

deevus ・ 8 days ago

U.S. only, it seems.

zeroday28 ・ 8 days ago

How many credit cards does an average person have?

  • Symbiote ・ 8 days ago

    "According to an Experian consumer credit review, Americans have an average of 3.84 credit cards per person."

    In most other countries I expect it will be far less. 1.7 for the UK.

internetter ・ 8 days ago

What will the annual fee be?

  • dev1398 ・ 5 days ago

    we are targeting no annual fee. Ideally we will be able to offer our product for free and will charge a subscription for pro features. Will always have a very usable and generous free tier the way we are envisioning it right now.

sunny41 ・ 7 days ago

Is it only for U.S.?