Bank of America recently announced its annual Rewards Day, which would take place on 11/6/2025. During this promotion, cardholders can earn an additional 2% cash back or 2% miles or 2% points, on top of what they are supposed to earn already, on the first $2,500 of purchase transactions that take place on 11/6/2025, regardless of when such transactions will post.

According to the fine print, this promotion is automatically applied to any Bank of America credit card, with no enrollment needed. It’s any Bank of America, not Bank of America issued credit card, so I don’t think cards like Atmos Rewards will be eligible for this deal.

The offer’s rules do not mention returns or refunds. Normally, credit card issuers claw back rewards after refunds, but I think in this case, Bank of America does not have a way to tie a return to a transaction made on 11/6/2025, so it makes a business decision to just include purchases and consider any gaming as a cost of running this promotion.

Also, if you plan to take advantage of this offer, I’ll try to make purchases before 5PM local time or at the latest 6PM. Networks like Visa or Mastercard have a cutoff time after which transactions will be pushed to the next day. For instance, if the cutoff time is 6PM and you make a transaction at 8PM on 11/6/2025, it may show up in Bank of America with 11/7/2025 as the transaction date and it will not earn you extra rewards, per the promotion’s rules. Since Bank of America is already generous in not considering returns, I don’t think the bank will budge on this issue and it’s simply too much of a headache to ask its associates to look up every transaction in debate and override the system.

What does Bank of America hope to achieve with this promotion? Here is what I think. Every card issuer has a population of accounts that are good to use, but rarely are. An issuer makes most money from interest income and it needs cardholders to spend, carry a balance and revolve to generate such income. So making cardholders spend is the first step. Issuers spend money on activation programs frequently to re-engage these dormant accounts. I think Bank of America is trying to accomplish that with the Rewards Day.

Instead of rolling out campaigns every now and then, they must decide that it’s better to set one day a year to activate as many cards as possible, and make a spectacle out of it. The Word Of Mouth will enhance the popularity of Bank of America’s branded cards. That I am writing about it here, on my blog, without any affiliates with BofA, is an example.

But I wonder if the bank did any analysis to figure out whether the gains outweigh the expense. It indicated that the first three editions of Rewards Day incurred $74 million in extra rewards expense. That’s a lot of money, so whatever gains it may have needs to be worth more that. The question is how to measure the impact and it’s not an easy one to answer.

Anyway, if you have a big purchase that you have been thinking about, a tax payment that you need to make or just something you want to buy for your family during the holiday, this offer can give you some nice rewards without having to apply for another card.