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Editorial policy – Welcome bonuses

In our coverage of credit cards, we will publish the best publicly available credit card offer that we know about. Sometimes this goes against our economic interests. We’re cool with that.

We get paid when you use some of the links on our site and across our social media presences to apply for credit cards. Our policy of always publishing the best publicly available welcome bonus means that, sometimes, we forego getting paid in order to show you the best offers. Sometimes we even publish a competing site’s link. That’s okay. Maintaining your trust is important to us and it all works out in the end. 🙂

Sometimes better targeted offers are available

Sometimes the best publicly available welcome bonus is not the best welcome bonus available. This is especially true with issuers like American Express, which offers increased, targeted welcome bonuses to some customers. Where you might be able to get a better welcome offer, in addition to showing you the best public offer, we’ll tell you what we’ve found and what our readers have found. And we’ll give you tips and tricks for finding these hidden, targeted offers. This might involve applying from a different internet connection, through a different web browser, or using private browsing/incognito mode.

Here’s an example:

As we publish this article, the best public welcome offer on the Business Platinum Card from American Express earns 120,000 points after spending $15,000 in 3 months. Because we have a referral link that offers this bonus, we would publish our link.

Referral link screenshot for The Business Platinum Card. The referrer earns 25,000 Membership Rewards points for each referred new cardmember. The referred card member earns 120,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $15,000 in purchases. At the time of publication, this was the best available public welcome bonus on this card.
What the referrer sees when generating a referral link with the Amex Business Platinum card.

But sometimes card issuers will give you a better offer. When we opened our link in incognito mode, we found a better offer!

In this case, we publish a welcome bonus feature, tell you what is possible and give you the tips and tricks we know about to get the best welcome bonus.

Targeted welcome offer of 150,000 Membership Rewards Points after spending $15,000 within three months. This offer shows up for some users in incognito mode.
Sometimes hidden, targeted welcome offers are available.

We think that this approach strikes a balance that serves all of our readers well.

If you want to hunt down the best welcome bonus available, you can come to The Wallet Hacker to find out what might be out there. You can use our tips and tricks to get a better welcome bonus than you could get anywhere else. But you might spend some extra time fiddling with web browsers to get a particular offer to show up.

If you don’t want to spend time looking for unpublished welcome bonuses, you will always find the best public welcome bonus on our site.

Bottom line

You can trust that The Wallet Hacker will always publish the best publicly available welcome bonuses for credit cards.

About the author

  • Aaron Hurd

    Aaron Hurd is a credit card, travel rewards, and loyalty program expert. Over the past 15 years, he has authored over a thousand expert contributions published by leading outlets including WSJ, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, NerdWallet, The Points Guy, Bankrate, CNET, and many others. He has also served in consulting roles for many of these same outlets, designing content strategy, hiring teams of teams of editors and contributors, developing thought-leadership pieces, and ghost-editing for senior editors. Aaron is well-known in the miles and points community and regularly presents about travel rewards at conferences like the Chicago Seminars and Minnebar. Aaron has enjoyed the game of optimizing credit card rewards since getting his first credit card shortly after he turned 18. He started learning about credit cards and travel rewards from the (now defunct) FatWallet Finance forums and FlyerTalk. He holds more than 40 open credit cards and has first-hand experience with almost every major credit card product.

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