When the Priceline Rewards Visa was first introduced over a year ago, it seemed like a promising card, but with somewhat sketchy details. With more information now available, however, it appears to be one of the best available general purpose cash back cards, meriting an updated review.

The basics
The Priceline Visa is a points-based card with no annual fee. You’ll earn 5 points per dollar spent on “Name Your Own Price” Priceline purchases and 2 points per dollar on everything else. Each point is worth at least one cent towards a past purchase, meaning you’re getting at least a 2% rebate on all purchases.

Understanding how your points can be redeemed can be a bit complicated. There are essentially a few rules to understand:

• You need to save up at least 2,500 points (worth $25) before you can apply your points as a credit towards a previous purchase. For example, if you have saved up 4,000 points and then made a charge of $40, you could redeem those 4,000 points for a $40 statement credit.
• You are also limited to applying points towards purchases of $25 or more made within the past 30 days. The exception to this are “Name Your Own Price” purchases on Priceline.com, which are eligible for point redemption within the first 90 days of posting to your account.
• Another rule is that you cannot make a partial payoff of a purchase, meaning that if you had saved up 4,000 points and made a charge of $50, you could not get a $40 credit and pay the other $10 in another way.

While you can only redeem your points against purchases made within the past 30 days (or 90 days for NYOP purchases), your points do not expire for 4 years, so there isn’t a need to immediately redeem them as you earn them.

Another “undocumented feature” of the rewards system is that you get an even better redemption ratio, up to 1.5 cents per point, when applying your points towards a “Name Your Own Price” Priceline.com transaction. Based on many customer experiences, the following redemption schedule is applied towards these “NYOP” transactions:

What this means is that if you can apply your points towards NYOP transactions over $800, the card will effectively earn you a 3% rebate on all your spending!

Caveats
In addition to the complications surrounding the point system, there are a few other non-ideal aspects to the card to be aware of:

• If you don’t use the card at least once every 6 months or keep a balance, your account may be closed and/or all your points forfeited
• Foreign currency transactions incur a 3% fee

Conclusion
Overall, the card’s point system could be simplified, but at its core, it offers at least a 2% rebate in a Visa product, making it an extremely attractive option. For those who use Priceline.com, it offers an even better value proposition.