The Amex Blue Cash Everyday vs The Amex EveryDay Credit Card

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The Blue Cash Everyday^® Card from American Express and the Amex EveryDay^® Credit Card are two no-annual fee cards from American Express that attract a lot of consumers, especially those who aren’t interested in paying anything to be a cardmember. While the two cards do have some basic features in common, they are vastly different in terms of the rewards they offer. Here’s a comparison of the Amex Blue Cash Everyday vs the Amex EveryDay Credit Card.

Basic features

Amex EveryDay Credit Card

• 0.0% introductory APR for the first 15 months. After that, your APR will be 13.24% to 22.24%, based on your creditworthiness
• Balance transfers: 0.0% introductory APR for the first 15 months on balance transfers requested within 30 days of account opening.
• No annual fee
• Foreign transaction fee: 2.7%

Amex Blue Cash Everyday

• 0.0% introductory APR for the first 12 months. After that, your APR will be 13.24% to 23.24%, based on your creditworthiness and other factors as determined at the time of account opening.
• Balance transfers: 0.0% introductory APR for the first 12 months on balance transfers requested within 30 days of account opening.
• No annual fee
• Foreign transaction fee: 2.7%

The two cards offer very similar basic features but the Amex EveryDay Credit Card comes out on top with a longer 0% APR intro period (15 months) and a slightly lower overall maximum APR. While there are small differences between the cards with respect to these features, there are significant differences between the cards in terms of how they earn rewards.

American Express Membership Rewards vs Reward Dollars

The first big difference between these two cards is that only one of the cards earns Membership Rewards.

• The Amex EveryDay Credit Card will earn you Membership Rewards
• The Amex Blue Cash Everyday will earn you Blue Cash “Reward Dollars.”

Reward Dollars can be redeemed for statement credits in increments of $25.

However, Membership Rewards — generally considered one of the more valuable reward currencies — can be transferred to several different airline and hotel partners.

Below is a list of the eligible travel partners.

Airlines

These partners do not have all have the same transfer ratios as you can see below:

• Delta Skymiles
• Club Premier AeroMexico
• Aeroplan Air Canada
• Flying Blue (Air France/KLM)
• MilleMigilia Club Alitalia
• ANA
• Asia Miles
• Avios British Airways (250 points = 200 Avios)
• Emirates Skyrewards
• Hawaiin Airlines
• Iberia Plus
• JetBlue
• KrisFlyer Singapore Airlines
• Virgin America (200 points = 100 Elevate points)
• Virgin Atlantic

Hotels

• Best Western Rewards
• Choice Privileges
• Hilton HHonors (1,000 points = 1,500 HHonors points)
• SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) (1,000 points = 333 Starpoints)

In addition to transferring Membership Rewards to travel partners, Membership Rewards can be redeemed in the following ways:

• Between .5 and 1.0 cent per point for gift cards
• 0.6 cent per point for a statement credit/charge
• 1.0 cent per point on air fare
• 0.7 cent per point on hotels, cruises, and vacation packages.

Thus,  you need to ask yourself if you want to transfer Membership Rewards to travel partners or if you just want to earn straight cash back. I’ll go into further detail about this difference below.

Earning Potential

Amex EveryDay Credit Card

• 2x points at US supermarkets, on up to $6,000 per year in purchases (then 1x)
• 1x points on other purchases.
• Make 20 or more purchases with your Card in a billing period and get 20% more points on those purchases less returns and credits.

Amex Blue Cash Everyday

• 3% Cash Back at U.S. supermarkets, up to $6,000 per year in purchases (then 1%)
• 2% cash back at U.S. gas stations
• 2% Cash Back at select U.S. department stores
• 1% Cash Back on other purchases.
• *10% back at US Wireless Telephone Service Providers on up to $2,000 spent a year (temporary promotion)

Examples of the department stores that will earn 2% are the following:

• Bealls
• Belk
• Bloomingdale’s
• Bon Ton Stores
• Boscov’s
• Century 21 Department Stores
• Dillard’s
• J.C. Penney (JCP)
• Kohl’s
• Lord & Taylor
• Macy’s
• Neiman Marcus
• Nordstrom
• Saks Fifth Avenue
• Sears
• Stein Mart

Which card will earn you more?

Which card will earn you more value depends on 1) your spending habits and 2) how you would utilize Membership Redemption awards.

I’ll first focus on earning potential based on spending habits.

Below is an earning comparison between the two cards based on a rough estimation of the average “consumer unit” in the United States. Keep in mind that this is a gross over-simplification of expenditures  and your individual spending habits could vary greatly. 

The following is an unscientific, estimated breakdown of the main expenditures by American consumer units mostly by using official data over the past couple of years (2012 to 2014) on consumers. I modified some of the figures to make things easy and have gone with conservative estimates on these expenses for the most part. In addition, I’m not factoring in expenses that some people could put on their credit cards like healthcare, car payments, rent, utilities, loan payments, etc.

• Gasoline: $2,500
• Parking, tolls, and misc. travel: $1,000
• Entertainment: $2,500
• Food at home (groceries): $6,000
• Dining: $2,700
• Apparel: $1,500
• Phone service: $1,000
• Misc.: $800
• Household expenses and furnishings: $3,000

That comes out to a total of $21,500 of expenses that could be put on your credit cards.

So let’s see how the cards would earn compared to each other:

Amex EveryDay Credit Card

• Gasoline: $2,500
• Parking, tolls, and misc. travel: $1,000
• Entertainment: $2,500
• Food at home (groceries): $6,000 (2X)
• Dining: $2,700
• Apparel: $1,500
• Phone service: $1,000
• Misc.: $800
• Household expenses and furnishings: $3,000

Year 1 earnings

• $27,500 + (20% of $27,500) = 33,000 Membership Rewards

Amex Blue Cash Everyday

• Gasoline: $2,500 (2%) = 50
• Parking, tolls, and misc. travel: $1,000 = 10
• Entertainment: $2,500 = 25
• Food at home (groceries): $6,000 (3%) = 180
• Dining: $2,700 = 27
• Apparel: $1,500 (2%) = 30
• Phone service: $1,000 (10%) = 100
• Misc.: $800 = 8
• Household expenses and furnishings: $3,000 = 30

Year 1 earnings

• This comes out to a total of $460 cash back!

Sign-up Bonuses

You can’t ever forget to factor in the sign-up bonuses as well.

Amex EveryDay Credit Card

• 10,000 Membership Rewards after you spend $1,000 in purchases on the Card within the first 3 months.

Amex Blue Cash Everyday

• $100 after you spend $1,000 in purchases on the Card within the first 3 months

So you are left with the following comparison after the first year of spending:

43,000 Membership Rewards vs $560 in cash back. 

This is when your specific intended use of your earnings comes into play.

Again, if you’re simply interested in earning straight cash back then this is an easy question for you to answer since redeeming 49,000 Membership Rewards for cash back would only net you $258 compared to the Blue Cash’s $460!

However, if you plan on transferring your Membership Rewards to travel partners you can get much, much more value.

For example, if you used those 49,000 Membership Rewards towards an economy flight with Aeroplan from North America to Europe via United, you’d be redeeming those points for about 1.9 cents per point. In other words, your 49,000 Membership Rewards would be worth $960 in travel. Obviously that’s a lot more than the cash back from the Blue Cash, so you’d get more value going with the Amex EveryDay Credit Card.

Final Word

Comparisons like these often come down to your personal spending habits and preferences for redemptions. Since this is a travel blog, I assume most readers are interested in travel redemptions. Although the Blue Cash earns more Reward Dollars than the Amex EveryDay Credit Card earns in Membership Rewards, you can easily redeem those Membership Rewards for more value and thus I give the nod to the Amex EveryDay Credit Card in most instances.