unofficially they have lightened up on that. my banker said if you opened bank accounts on the same day there system will tell the banker if the customer is prequalified for USB AR, and if so, they can do the application at the same time, with some manual intervention. normally, you have to be a customer for 35 days prior.

in some grocery store branches there is a $200 new bank account SUB going on, so it can dovetail nicely with the AR, to get close to $1000 in net value from the branch visit.

i mentioned up thread somewhere that USB requires a mid 700s FICO for this, according to the banker. they also stated (from their own pure anecdotal experience) that they get very few applications (maybe 1 a week?) so knock on wood, the barriers to entry to the card are high enough that I hope they leave the earnings structure untouched. I find NFC payment at more and more places now, especially non category type of places. both car dealers i visited recently for repair/warranty work had NFC and those are typically bigger expenses