Originally Posted by
FLYDCA
How does that work if I recently paid the annual fee? I'm not eager to shell that out again. The agent said she could swap me to a Visa version but I did not investigate too much since I have recurring payments setup on the Mastercard which I hoped to avoid setting up again.
The deals with a bonus waive the annual fee for the first year. You have to spend at least $25,000 in the first year to receive the bonus, so you'd want to switch at least your daily spend to the new card (assuming you spend enough to qualify). You could shift recurring payments over at your leisure.
An FTer told me the Mastercard Explorer cards have a grandfathered advantage: "once you have a M+ Explorer Visa card, rules regarding churning will apply to you" (the apparent advantage to sticking with MC being that we're exempt from those rules). I didn't understand it, though, and haven't followed up.