BMO’s Ultra Premium credit card, the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card also sees a new increased welcome bonus offer. It is the second of their proprietary rewards cards to receive one as the BMO AscendTM World Elite®* Mastercard®*. had its welcome bonus increased to 90,000 points in the latest updates from the bank.
The 120,000 BMO Rewards Points bonus
New BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege Cardholders will get up to 120,000 points as follows
- 50,000 points when you spend $6,000 in the first 3 months
- 30,000 points when you spend at least $30,000 in the first 6 months.
- 40,000 points when you spend at least $75,000 in the first year.
As we mentioned in our post on the Ascend World Elite card, it’s nice to see BMO increase their welcome bonus offers and unlike the Ascend card, the Visa Infinite Privilege actually sees it overall spend requirement drop. Now, before you go off celebrating more points for less spend, look at the actual spend amounts listed above. To get the entire bonus you need to spend $75,000 on your card. That’s not a typo and it is actually $25,000 less than the previous iteration of the offer which required $100,000 in spend. I can think of many other cards where you can spend your $75,000 and be rewarded way more handsomely in terms of bonuses and also on everyday spend as this card has an atrocious for an ultra premium card base earn rate of 1 point per dollar which is a 0.83% return at the most.
This card actually requires the most amount of spending out of any publicly available cards in Canada and by a lot. The next highest card in terms of spend requirement is the aforementioned BMO Ascend World Elite Mastercard at $34,500. That’s right the eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege Card requires almost double that! And the rest of the market? You are looking at $10,000 or less. Anyways I digress – no point in dogging BMO more than I already do.
The bonus of 120,000 points itself is worth $800 towards any travel or BMO Investment products. The absolute value however after taking into account the annual fees for the first and second years but also adding back the $200 annual lifestyle credits is $202. You can also redeem for statement credits with their Pay with Points redemption option in which the 120,000 points would provide $2 in absolute value.
Earn Rates
The card earns BMO Rewards points like other proprietary BMO cards and has category multipliers on the types of purchases:
- 5 points per eligible dollar spent on groceries, dining, drugstore purchases, gas and travel. This earn rate is awarded on the first $100,000 spent in these categories combined annually.
- 1 point per dollar spent on all other spending
Airport Lounge Access
The BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card offers Visa Airport Companion Program hosted by Dragonpass and it Includes six (6) free visits annually. After you use up the 6 free visit you can pay US$35 per person to access lounges. At US$99 per year for the membership and US$35 per visit this benefit alone is worth around $385 on its own if you do use up all six of your passes.
Wrapping it up
BMO has increased the welcome bonus on their ultra premium card, the eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card to 120,000 points. Just as we saw with the BMO Ascend World Elite Mastercard this one is a tough one to rave about when you have to spend $75,000 in the first year to receive it. Add in the fact this is an Ultra Premium card whose base earn rate of 1 point per dollar only provides a 0.67% return on travel (0.83% with the 10% additional card bonus) and I am left scratching my head as to why? Why, would someone pick this card when there are more rewarding options that require way less spend for the welcome bonus, have the same or better benefits and are better on everyday usage. I mean there are no fee entry level cards that provide a better base earn rate than this card does. I’ll leave it at that.