DOC Compass — Offers, decoded

Alliant credit union has recently made improvements to two of their credit cards. Because their cards are far more interesting and enticing, I thought it was time to put together a post that explains everything you need to know about their cards.

Eligibility

Unlike other card issuers you need to be a member of Alliant before you’re eligible to apply for their cards. There is no hard pull to join and you can read about the joining process here. In addition to the credit cards they offer, there are several other benefits of joining:

Offer an account useful for the secured loan trick (useful for increasing credit score)
They are one of the better hub accounts (there are also lots of data points on if an Alliant ACH credit triggers the direct deposit requirement for bank account bonuses)
They have a 1.05% APY Savings account. Not the highest rate out there, but still competitive. You can view a full list of the best savings accounts here.

Full List Of Alliant Credit Cards

Alliant currently offers three credit cards:

Alliant Cashback Visa Signature Credit Card
- Annual fee of $59 is waived first year
- Card earns 3% cash back on all purchases first year and 2.5% cash back on all purchases year two onwards
- No foreign transaction fees
Alliant Visa Platinum Rewards Credit Card
- No annual fee
- 5,000 point sign up bonus after $500 in spend
- Card earns 2 points per $1 spent
- Points are worth 1¢ each
Visa Platinum Card
- No annual fee
- No rewards program or sign up bonus

Best Cards

The Visa Platinum is obviously not worth considering due to the no rewards program and the fact that the Platinum Rewards card is basically the same except it has a sign up bonus and earns 2x points. That card and the Cashback Visa Signature card are both worth considering.

Most people will be best off applying for the Cashback visa signature card as it earns 3% cash back in the first year with no annual fee. Second year onwards it might make sense to downgrade to the Visa Platinum Rewards card if you spend less than $11,800 on the card (that’s the break even point for the extra 0.5% cash back you receive versus the $59 annual fee).

The exception to this is that the Platinum Rewards card has offered targeted sign up bonuses in the past, for example:

In this case it would make more sense to sign up for that targeted offer and then upgrade to the 3% card (upgrading gets the annual fee waived and the 3% rate).

Rules/Things To Know

Alliant does allow product changes. As mentioned above if you product change to Visa Signature Cashback card you’ll earn the 3% cash back with no annual fee in the first year. Keep in mind if you product change from the points earning card to the cashback card, you’ll lose any unredeemed points according to this datapoint.
According to creditboards all recent applicants had their TransUnion credit report pulled. We also have additional datapoints confirming this: 1, 2, 3
Seem to be somewhat inquiry sensitive. Denial data points (remember this is based on your TransUnion report):
- 4 in last year, 16 in last 2 years.
- 10 in last year
Cash advance limit cannot be reduced.
Hard pull for credit limit increases initiated by the customer (e.g calling in). This has been confirmed with our contact at Alliant.
There is a reconsideration number, this can be found here.
They do not prorate annual fees.
Only replacement cards can be expedited.
You’re limited to one Alliant credit card.
They do not provide instant credit card numbers.
They reuse any hard pulls done for credit card applications for 30/45 days.

Things We Don’t Know

I’m hoping readers can help out in this section. Basically this is a list of things we don’t know but would like an answer to:

Is there a reconsideration number for Alliant?
What are the annual fee rules?
Do they allow credit card reallocation? If so, hard or soft pull?
If you apply for multiple cards, will the inquiries be combined?

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this proves to be a useful reference point for Alliant credit cards and they continue to bring new cards to market. We’ve done a similar post for other card issuers that you can view below: