5 Things to Know About the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Credit Card

As a premium general travel card, it’s a fine choice. The card’s travel credit is huge, and rewards for travel spending are generous. It’s even great as your everyday credit card if you’re comfortable paying for purchases via a mobile wallet, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Here are five things to know about the U.S. Bank Altitude™ Reserve Visa Infinite® Card.

The price of the U.S. Bank Altitude™ Reserve Visa Infinite® Card is $400. Though this probably won’t appeal to the fee-adverse, you can offset the cost with a huge statement credit.

This card offers $325 in annual statement credit toward dining and travel expenditures. Avid travel-card users who know they’ll fully use the credit will think of the card’s cost as the annual fee minus the $325 credit.

The credit is applied automatically to restaurant purchases and spending directly with such travel providers as airlines, hotels, car rental companies, taxis, limousines, passenger trains and cruise line companies. So if you use the card to buy a round-trip domestic ticket at American Airlines for $425, $325 of that amount will essentially be erased by the travel credit, costing you a net $100 for the ticket. (So you could consider it saving $325 on that ticket or saving $325 on the annual fee.)

The annual fee is also easier to swallow because of the sign-up bonus: Earn an enrollment bonus of 50,000 points worth $750 on travel. Just spend $4,500 in the first 90 days of account opening. That essentially pays for nearly two years of annual fees. Or, looked at another way: If you can always fully use the travel credit, the bonus washes out the annual fee for a decade.

You can earn serious points using this card.

• 5 points per dollar spent on prepaid hotels and car rentals booked directly in the Altitude Rewards Center.

• 3 points per dollar spent on eligible travel and mobile wallet spending.

• 1 point per dollar spent on everything else.

Pay special attention to the triple points on mobile wallet spending. That means if you can pay for your in-person or online purchase using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay, you’re getting a terrific rewards rate on categories of spending that few other cards can match. That makes the card valuable for non-travel spending.

Rewards are earned in a U.S. Bank points currency. Points are worth 1.5 cents each when redeemed through the U.S. Bank online portal to buy travel, such as flight tickets and hotel stays. (Points can also be redeemed at a lower rate for things like cash back, gift cards and merchandise.)

This high redemption rate is a big deal. That means that for every dollar you spend in the bonus categories, you earn 1.5x that if you redeem the points for travel through U.S. Bank. If you do that, the bonus rates translate to:

• 7.5% on prepaid hotels and car rentals booked directly in the Altitude Rewards Center.

• 4.5% on eligible travel and mobile wallet spending.

That’s a big drawback, especially for high-frequency travelers who are used to strategically transferring credit card points to maximize their value.

Like many premium travel cards, the U.S. Bank Altitude™ Reserve Visa Infinite® Card has a list of perks that goes on and on, and many of these benefits can be quite useful to travelers.