Best ways to earn miles or cashback on Utilities

After rent and mortgage, utilities are a big spend item for many households, and even businesses. Having a good strategy for earning most points or miles through these spend organically can keep your points and miles stash full for when you need them.

But alas, not many credit card issuers cater to this category. In this post, I go over some of the better ways to earn points and miles or simple cashback in the Utilities category, which should give you a better return than your basic 2% cashback or 2x points card. For this post, I am ignoring special targeted offers (like the 4.63% return on my Bank of America Travel Rewards card) or credit card offers that last for a few months (like Discover It 3%) but something that everyone can use and rely upon.

1. 3% cashback with Venmo credit card

Person to person money transfer service, Venmo, launched its credit card in 2020 to not much fanfare. One of the under appreciated perks of the card is that it earns unbounded 3% cashback in your top spend category, and Utilities is one of the allowed categories. 

3% cashback is a good base level and can be equivalent to earning 3x Membership rewards (considering Rakuten 1:1 cashback to MR transfer), or 3.5x Marriott points or 6x Hilton points if you purchase those currencies using your cashback during sale.

They also have for the past 2 years, offered double cashback for the second half of the year so you can even earn 6% cashback on utilities if you get targeted.

Venmo credit card cashback categories

2. 5x Wyndham points with Barclays Wyndham Earner Business Card

Another credit card that treats utilities as a first class category is Barclays Wyndham Earner Business Credit card. The card earns 8x on Wyndham hotels and gas, and 5x on utilities and advertising. You can try and get more than 1c value from Wyndham points by using them when cash rates are high or you can book Vacasa rentals using them which should be an even better value. 

The card refunds you 10% points for any redemption. One thing to note though is that Wyndham points expire 24 months after earning but there are ways around it. The card comes with a $95 annual fee but it is offset by 15000 anniversary point bonus.

Wyndham cards comparison - courtesy Wyndham.

3. 3x AA miles with GiftCards.com gift cards via AA shopping portal

This is not a credit card play per se but a Shopping portal play. American Airlines shopping portal (AAdvantageeShopping) often awards 3x miles and loyalty points for giftcards.com purchases. giftcards.com sells $250 Visa eGift cards with a $5.95 fee, that comes out to be around 2.4% fee. Using your best cashback or rewards card, you should be able to recoup some of that fee and earn 3x AA miles as a bonus. You can then use those gift cards anywhere to get that rate of return.

Earn 3x AA miles on utilities with AAdvantage eShopping portal

Another way to look at is as if you are purchasing AA miles + loyalty points at .8c/point with that fee and considering your credit card rewards as extra. It would be a steal if AA miles were on sale at that price point. They usually are on sale for 1.8-2c/mile (although not since January this year) but you would not earn any loyalty points when purchasing them so this is better in that regard as well.

Also consider that giftcards.com runs regular sales on Visa eGift cards which can be from the usual 5% sale to somewhat annual 10% sale. During these sale events, you can effectively earn 2.6%-7.6% cash back + 3x AA miles + your credit card rewards, making it too good of an opportunity to miss. On the other hand, the American Airlines portal also runs regular extra bonus rewards offers, where you can get 2x-3x extra rewards for spending set amounts via the portal. Both offers present excellent opportunities to rake in cashback and rewards.

Utilities are one of the easiest ways to liquidate your Visa, Mastercard or Amex gift cards. You can often do multiple transactions and you can even prepay your bill and carry a negative balance with many Utility merchants. Also, you don't have to worry about return protections or refunds when paying for Utilities with your giftcards. 

One thing to note with shopping portal purchases is that you can often only earn rewards on $2000 worth of gift card purchases, so avoid going over that limit. Also, do plan some time for tracking all your egift cards, and have a process like an online spreadsheet to store their info in order to not forget or lose them. You could also purchase from a dedicated giftcards.com account to be able to get to them later.

4. 5x UR points with Staples gift cards

This is another and very popular gift cards option with the strongest potential return. Office store Staples, often runs fee free offers on $200 Visa and Mastercard gift cards. If you have Chase Ink Cash Business credit card you can earn 5x Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points on these purchases, and you can then use those gift cards to pay your utility bills, effectively earning 5x UR points on your utilities.

The trick to using those 5x UR points is not to turn them into cashback but pairing your Ink Cash Card with a Chase Ink Preferred, Chase Sapphire Preferred card or a Chase Sapphire Reserve card and using the UR points as a transferable currency. You can then it transfer partners like Hyatt, United or Air Canada and get a higher value than the standard 1c cashback.

There is a limit of $25,000 5x spend per calendar year on the Chase Ink Cash card which you should be aware of, but you can always get another card if you are still under 5/24. 

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Hopefully, one of the above options should appeal to you and help you earn more than average rewards on your utilities if you are not doing it already.

Did I miss any better cards or opportunities? Please let me know in comments.