BMO eclipse rise Visa

Introducing the BMO eclipse rise Visa* Card – does it rise to the occasion?

Patrick S Credit Cards

This week BMO revealed their newest rewards credit card, the no annual fee BMO eclipse rise Visa* Card. This card replaces the recently discontinued BMO Rewards Mastercard and expands upon their portfolio of eclipse Visa cards which include the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite* Card and the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card

Earn 20,000 bonus Welcome Points

The BMO eclipse rise Visa Card has launched with a welcome bonus offer of 20,000 points. It is marketed as up to 25,000 points but 5,000 of those points are a bonus that can be earned each and every year with the card.

The bonus is awarded as follows:

  • Get 20,000 points when you spend $1,500 in the first three months of having the card plus get a 0.99% introductory interest rate on Balance Transfers for 9 months, 2% fee applies to balance amounts transferred.*

These 20,000 points are worth $133.33 when redeemed for travel or BMO Investment products. That actually works out to being quite a good welcome bonus for a no annual fee card.

Earn up to 5,000 bonus points every year:

The card also offers bonus points each year of having the card which are awarded as follows:

  • Get 2,500 bonus points for paying your full credit card balance on time for 12 consecutive months.
  • Get another 2,500 bonus points for redeeming at least 12,000 points annually towards your statement balance with Pay with Points

Earning points with the BMO eclipse rise Visa Card

The BMO eclipse rise Visa Card earns points as follows:

  • Earn 5x the BMO Rewards points for every $2 spent on recurring bill payments, groceries, dining and takeout.*
    There is an annual cap of $5,000 per category
  • Then get 1 point for every $2 spent on everything else!*

Here we have BMO with their famous or should we say infamous 5x points earning which isn’t equal to other card’s 5x points earning.  But then they take it even one step beyond that as the 5x points are based on $2 increments, not $1! Once again we are seeing some sly marketing from BMO.

Recommended reading: When earning 5x points isn’t the same as earning 5x points – a loyalty lesson

If we take the 5 points per $2 spent in select categories and 1 point per $2 spent on all other purchases and want to properly compare them to other cards in the market we have to take half of those actual numbers. So, technically speaking the card earns 2.5 points per dollar spent on recurring bill payments, groceries, dining and takeout and 0.5 points on everything else.

 

Comparatively speaking, that should say “Make every day a 2.5x points day” – and that’s a stretch since the actual value is even lower than that

 

You might say well, 2.5 points and 0.5 points per actual dollar spent is pretty good, especially that 2.5 points right? That must mean a 0.5% and 2.5% return on spending. Unfortunately it does not as BMO Rewards redemptions are not a simple 100 to 1 ratio like most programs.

Redeeming points with the BMO eclipse rise Visa Card

Redeeming points earned on the BMO eclispe rise Visa Card works the same as all the other cards in the BMO Rewards program. That means you can redeem points as follows:

  • Any travel purchases made on the card or redeeming for BMO investment products: 150 points = $1
  • Pay with Points for a statement credit: 200 points = $1

As you can see the redemption rate is not your typical 100 to 1 ratio. If we take the travel and BMO investment product redemption rate of $1 and divide by 150 points it makes each BMO Rewards point worth 0.67 cents. If we apply that to the earn rate of 5 points for $2 (2.5 points per $1) those are providing a real return of 1.67%. That’s actually really good for a no fee card considering there are perhaps only six or seven other no fee cards that meet or beat this rate.

In terms of the base earn rate the 1 point for $2 (0.5 points for $1) that works out to a real return of ~0.33%. That’s not very good, in fact that’s pretty bad. Sure, earning some sort of rewards is better than nothing but you can earn so much more with other no fee cards.

Then you have the Pay with Points cash back statement credit, which is a required redemption if you want to earn the extra annual bonus points. This option is 200 points for $1 which works out to 0.5 cents per point. That’s a 1.25% return for the accelerated earn categories, again not bad but not great either. For the base earn rate of 1 point for $2, the value comes in at paltry 0.25%. This actually ties two other cards for having the lowest cash back return on spend for a non-secured rewards card. Do I even need to say more about that?

Now, if you do redeem 12,000 points annually via the Pay with Points option you’ll receive 2,500 bonus points so you would gain roughly 20% more value (if you only redeem 12,000 points) which boosts the card’s cash back returns to 0.3% and 1.5%. At least it’s a little something extra but in reality they are trying to force your hand here to use the least valuable redemption option in the whole program. Even with them providing the bonus points, it is more profitable for BMO as it costs them less per point versus cardholders using them for travel, BMO Investment products or even gift cards.

Insurance

The card comes with basic purchase protection and extended warranty coverage and also provides mobile device insurance. Mobile device insurance is quite rare for no fee cards with only a handful of other no fee cards in the market providing this type of coverage so this is one good perk of the card.

How does it compare to the old no fee BMO Rewards Mastercard?

The card has the potential to provide more value than the no fee BMO Rewards Mastercard it replaces as the accelerated earn rates should hopefully keep a cardholder’s overall return at or above the old card’s 0.66% return.  However. it also has the potential to provide a lot less value if there is a lot of spend outside of the accelerated earn rate categories. It really comes down to an individual’s spending habits.

Wrapping it up

Hopefully you caught me asking “will this card rise to the occasion?” in last week’s This Week in RWRDS  when I mentioned another new card being released 😉

Unfortunately the answer to that question is, no, it does not “rise to the occasion”. We have a card that falls flat and probably would have been better off being named the BMO eclipse Visa Card and leaving ‘rise’ out of the name. There is nothing elevating about this card.

Sure – the accelerated earn rates represent good value but there are other no fee cards providing similar or even better value. What those other cards don’t have is what really detracts from the rise card’s accelerated earn rates and that is the very poor base earn rate. This is endemic to all BMO cards however, from this entry level no fee card to their ultra premium BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card, they all suffer from poor base earn rates.

In the end, I’ll use my word of the month that I have used for the other two cards that were released over the past few weeks to describe this card and that word is mediocre.

Click here to learn more and/or to apply for the BMO eclipse rise Visa Card

Here is a small selection of the cards RWRDS Canada considers to be better no fee options: