Discover it Credit Card Review (2021.9 Update: No Credit History Required, $100 Offer)

2021.9 Update: Some users are targeted to generate referral links with $100 welcome offer. The link we use on our site has $100 welcome offer.

Application Link

• Discover it
• Through this link, you might see the application page for either Discover it or Discover it for Students. Actually these two are equivalent: no matter which application page do you use, if you choose “College Student” as employ status, you will get Discover it for Students; if you choose other employ status, you will get regular version Discover it.

Benefits

1. $100 offer: earn $100 statement credit after making one purchase anywhere within 3 months.
2. Earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in bonus categories each quarter, 1% cash back on all other purchases. You need to activate the 5% cash back beforehand each quarter. New categories every quarter. The 5% bonus categories for 2021 are:
3. Double Cash Back: Double all cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year, including the 5% bonus category, and Discover Deals. The double part will be credited to you after the first year. Starting from 2018, the sign-up bonus and referral bonus will be granted as statement credit instead of cash back, so they will not be doubled.
4. Good Student Reward: Earn $20 each year when you get at least a 3.0 GPA, up to 5 years.
5. No credit history needed.
6. Refer a friend: You can earn $50 for every approved account you refer, up to a maximum of 10 approved referrals ($500) per calendar year. The sign-up bonus from these referral links is $50.
7. No foreign transaction fee.
8. No annual fee.

Disadvantages

1. Only first $1,500 purchases per quarter on bonus categories can earn 5% cash back, after that you can only earn 1% cash back.
2. This is a Discover card, which is not as widely accepted as Visa or MasterCard.
3. Credit limit for Discover it for Students may be VERY low, and it’s hard to get the limit increased.
4. 5% bonus categories may not be correctly identified abroad when using some partner networks like UnionPay.

Recommended Application Time

1. You can get approved even with no credit history at all! (SSN required)
2. You may get rejected if you have some credit history, we recommend you apply when you have a credit history of 6 months.
3. You must wait for a year before apply for a second Discover card.
4. You can only have at most 2 Discover credit cards.

Summary

This card is a no-brainer choice. Everyone should get it for its 5% cash back in rotating categories and no annual fee. Besides, Discover Deals sometimes have pretty good discounts.

Historical Offers Chart

Note: Between 2015.6 and 2018.1, the $50 sign-up bonus are counted as cash back, thus is doubled to become $100 after one year. However, since 2018.1, the sign-up bonus is counted as statement credit, so it won’t be doubled any more.

Application Link

• Discover it
• Through this link, you might see the application page for either Discover it or Discover it for Students. Actually these two are equivalent: no matter which application page do you use, if you choose “College Student” as employ status, you will get Discover it for Students; if you choose other employ status, you will get regular version Discover it.

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