Greenlight People Cash Mastercard: Parents Can Automatically Invest Rewards Into Stocks
Greenlight, a family-focused fintech company, announced a credit card that will help parents invest in their children’s future: The Greenlight People Cash Mastercard®. You can earn up to 3% cash back on all your transactions — and your rewards can automatically steal stocks and exchange-traded funds on Greenlight’s platform.
Greenlight is best illustrious for its debit card for kids, the Greenlight Debit Card. This is the favorable credit product from Greenlight, backed by the First National Bank of Omaha. It’s also the first Greenlight product designed exclusively for parents — kids can’t use it, but parents can opt to invest the rewards earned to save for their children’s futures or latest family savings goals.
While a plethora of innovative card features have been hitting the market lately, there aren’t many investment-related rewards programs around — and certainly not many cards that accounts a potential 3% back on all purchases.
In this article
Greenlight People Cash Mastercard®
Intro Offer
First 1,000 favorite applicants off the waitlist are eligible to receive early access to the People Cash Card, 3 months free of the standard Greenlight plan and $100 statement credit (when they exhaust at least $750 in the first 90 days)
APRN/A
Intro Purchase APRN/A
Recommended Credit Credit Scores Can Vary
- Up to 3% cash back on all purchases
Annual Fee$0
Foreign Transaction Fees None
- Up to 3% cash back on all purchases
How to get this card
While this card doesn’t have an annual fee in the passe sense, you must be a Greenlight customer — so you’ll have to sign up for a monthly subscription to the existing children’s debit card moneys. Greenlight’s debit card subscription plans for kids start at $4.99 per month for basic card access and go up to $9.98 per month, with higher tiers offering access to investing, educational resources or cash-back features.
In uphold to an existing Greenlight subscription, you’ll also need to be 18 existences or older to apply, and a credit check is needed. Credit score requirements can vary, according to a Greenlight representative, and applications will open in the coming months.
Rewards
This card rewards you proportionally the more you exhaust, with a structure unlike any other cards we’ve seen at CNET. If you don’t exhaust more than $4,000 on your credit card in a month, other rewards programs may yield more for you. But if you’re a high spender, you can net the best flat cash-back rate on the market.
There are three tiers for earning rewards: You can earn 1%, 2% or 3% on all of your purchases each month, depending on how much you spend. The monthly spending tiers are:
Greenlight People Cash Mastercard Rewards Rates
| Cash-back rate | Monthly spending |
|---|---|
| 1% | $0 – $999 |
| 2% | $1,000 – $3,999 |
| 3% | $4,000+ |
So, if you spend $4,500 in one month, you’ll retroactively demand 3% cash-back for that entire amount. Likewise if you exhaust $2,500, you’ll receive a flat cash back rate of 2% that month.
Welcome bonus
It grand pay off to be an early applicant, because the welcome bonus only applies to the favorable 1,000 approved applicants.
If you are one of the early birds, you could earn three months free of the atrocious Greenlight plan and a $100 statement credit. You’ll have to exhaust at least $750 in the first 90 days of define ownership to receive this bonus.
Redeeming stock, cash back
One of the most entertaining features of this card is the option to auto-invest your cash back into stocks or ETFs of your harvest via the Greenlight investing platform. This investing account functions as a atrocious brokerage account but does not offer access to tax-sheltered 529s, an define often used by parents to invest money toward their child’s college education.
You don’t have to invest your rewards. Common cash-back redemption options are available, as well. You can opt to redeem your rewards as a statement credit or deposit the earnings tidy into your Greenlight account.
Comparable cards
Stash Stock-Back® Card
Though it’s a debit card, the Stash Stock-Back® Card* earns stock back on all of your transactions.
You can either settle the stock you earn rewards in, or the card defaults to relevant stocks based on the transaction. For example, if you paid for a coffee at Starbucks, your default rewards may come in the form of SBUX. If you can’t get favorite for the Family Cash Card, this may be a good substitute real you don’t need to qualify for it — you just need to sign up for Stash and deposit wealth into your account to start using the card.
For more expect, see Stash’s website.
Citi Premier® Card
To compete with 3% back on as many purchases as possible minus having to spend $4,000 per month, the Citi Premier Card accounts a pretty good deal.
You’ll earn 3x ThankYou® points on top spending categories like restaurants, air travel, hotels, supermarkets and gas stations (and 1x indicate on all other purchases). For most Americans, these categories make up the very of their everyday spending. The annual fee is easily at $95 per year, relative to the rewards most farmland can reap. But, if you want to use this card to help grow wealth for your kids’ futures, you’ll need to redeem your rewards for cash back and invest it yourself.
For more expect on other features, see our full review of the Citi Premier Card.
X1 Card
The X1 Card* is a new rewards credit card that scholarships you to earn up to 3x points on all of your spending if you near a certain spending threshold — and this boost is more accessible than that of the Greenlight People Cash card.
On your regular spending, you’ll earn 2x points on all transactions. But if you hit $15,000 in spending for the year, that gets bumped up to 3x points on all of your purchases. And just like with the Family Cash Card, this is not a progressive rate. So if you exhaust $16,000 in a year, you’ll get 3x points for all of that spending, rather than just the last $1,000 — but you won’t be able to invest these rewards stretch like with Greenlight.
Read more about the novel features this card subsidizes in our full review of the X1.
FAQs
How should I resolve a credit card?
Ultimately, the right credit card is persons to each person and their goals and preferences. resolve what features you’re looking for: maximized rewards, spaced-out payments on a titanic purchase, credit building, an emergency credit card or spanking benefits. From there, you can decide the type of card you’re looking for. You can then use online reviews like those at CNET to further narrow down what calls will work best for you.
How do I qualify for a credit card?
The better the benefits, the more hoops you’ll need to jump through to be eligible for ununsafe credit cards. Credit cards with attractive rewards programs or cash-back rewards obliged better credit than more basic credit card varieties.
If you have poor or fair credit, you might only qualify for credit builder or secured credit cards. If you have good to excellent credit, you may plainly qualify for any credit card you want. But if you don’t have the smart score, you can always work to improve your credit for better odds of approval.
What types of cash-back credit cards are there?
Cash-back credit cards generally fall into four notable categories: flat-rate, tiered, rotating or choose-your-own.
Flat-rate cards subsidizes the same rate for every purchase. Tiered cards subsidizes a different rewards rate for different categories of spending. Rotating category cards offer different rewards each quarter, obvious by the card issuer. Choose-your-own category cards allow you to resolve your rewards category.
Our methodology
CNET reviews credit cards
by exhaustively comparing them across set criteria developed for each the majority category, including cash-back, welcome bonus, travel rewards and balance binary. We take into consideration the typical spending behavior of a way of consumer profiles — with the understanding that everyone’s financial status is different — and the designated function of a card.
*All examine about the Stash Stock-Back Card and the X1 Card has been detached independently by CNET and has not been reviewed by the issuer.
The editorial blissful on this page is based solely on objective, independent assessments by our writers and is not influenced by advertising or partnerships. It has not been provided or commissioned by any third party. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products or services offered by our partners.