BofA Rewards is Bank of America's loyalty program, and it pays you a percentage bonus on top of whatever your Bank of America credit cards already earn. The size of that bonus depends on how much money you keep with the bank: 10% at the entry tier, rising to 75% at the top.
It replaced Preferred Rewards on May 26, 2026. The headline change is that the old $20,000 minimum balance is gone, so any Bank of America personal checking customer can now join.
This covers how the program works, what each tier is worth, and how to decide whether moving money to qualify is worth doing.
The Four Tiers
Qualification runs on your three-month combined average daily balance across Bank of America deposit accounts and Merrill investment accounts. HSAs and other specialty accounts do not count toward it.
Member. Under $30,000. A 10% bonus on credit card rewards. This tier is new, and it is the reason the program went from roughly 11 million members to an estimated 30 million eligible customers.
Preferred Plus. $30,000 to $99,999. A 25% bonus.
Preferred Honors. $100,000 to $999,999. A 50% bonus, plus subscription reimbursement worth up to $96 a year.
Premier. $1 million and above. A 75% bonus, subscription reimbursement worth up to $180 a year, and access to tier-exclusive lifestyle offers and partner events.
Balances are reviewed daily for your first 30 days, then quarterly after that. You move up automatically when you cross a threshold, so there is no application step or annual requalification once you are enrolled.
What the Bonus Actually Does
The mechanic is a multiplier on your card's base earning rate, not a separate pot of points. Your card does not change. The arithmetic on top of it does.
Take the Customized Cash Rewards card, which earns 3% in a category you choose. At Member it becomes 3.3%. At Preferred Plus, 3.75%. At Preferred Honors, 4.5%. At Premier, 5.25%.
The Unlimited Cash Rewards card earning a flat 1.5% scales the same way, reaching 2.625% at Premier. The Premium Rewards card earning 2x on travel and dining reaches 3x at Preferred Honors and 3.5x at Premier.
That last one matters for comparison shopping. 3x on travel and dining puts the Premium Rewards card in the same earning territory as mid-tier travel cards from other issuers, at a $95 annual fee. What it does not have is a transfer-partner network, so those points redeem at a fixed rate rather than converting into airline or hotel currency.
For the card-by-card arithmetic across every Bank of America card, we have a separate breakdown of what each tier pays.
What Comes With It Beyond Card Earnings
Three things apply at every tier, including Member:
Cash-back offers from more than 15,000 national and local brands, redeemable through the app. Rate discounts on home and auto loans. Enhanced fraud monitoring, including dark-web and Social Security number monitoring.
The subscription reimbursement is tier-gated, worth up to $96 a year at Preferred Honors and up to $180 at Premier. Bank of America has indicated it covers streaming, entertainment and news subscriptions, though the full eligible-services list was not published at launch. If you are counting on a specific service being covered, check before you plan around it.
Is It Worth Moving Money To Qualify
This is the real question, and the answer is arithmetic rather than opinion.
Moving money to Bank of America or Merrill to clear a tier threshold has a cost: whatever that money would have earned elsewhere. Compare that against what the higher bonus returns on your actual card spending.
Work an example. Suppose you spend $20,000 a year on a Customized Cash Rewards card, concentrated in your 3% category. At Member's 10% bonus you earn 3.3%, so $660. At Preferred Plus's 25% you earn 3.75%, so $750. The tier upgrade is worth $90 a year on that spending.
To get it you need $30,000 sitting in qualifying accounts. If that money would otherwise earn 4% in a high-yield savings account and Bank of America's deposit rates are materially lower, you are giving up hundreds of dollars of interest to gain $90 of rewards. That trade loses money, and it is the one most people make without running it.
The calculation flips when the money was going to sit at Bank of America anyway, or when it is in a Merrill brokerage account that is invested rather than in cash. Merrill balances count toward the tier, and an invested portfolio is not giving up savings interest to be there. For customers who already bank and invest with Bank of America, the tiers are close to free.
The short version: do not move cash to chase a tier. Do count the balances you already have.
What Actually Counts Toward Your Balance
The tier is calculated on a three-month combined average daily balance, and both halves of that phrase matter.
Combined means it aggregates across qualifying accounts rather than looking at any single one. Bank of America deposit accounts, checking and savings, count. So do Merrill investment accounts, which is the part people most often overlook. A retirement or brokerage balance sitting at Merrill counts toward the same total as cash in checking.
Average daily means a one-day spike does not qualify you. Moving $30,000 in for a week and pulling it back out will not clear the threshold, because the average across three months is what the bank measures.
HSAs and other specialty accounts are excluded. If a meaningful share of your Bank of America relationship sits in one of those, it does not help your tier.
The practical consequence: check the total before assuming you are in the entry tier. Households with a Merrill rollover IRA from an old employer are frequently at Preferred Plus or Preferred Honors without having done anything deliberate, and without knowing it.
A Worked Comparison Across Tiers
Run one realistic spending profile through all four tiers so the differences are concrete.
Say $18,000 a year on a Customized Cash Rewards card in the 3% category, plus $12,000 on an Unlimited Cash Rewards card at 1.5%. Base earnings before any bonus: $540 plus $180, so $720.
At Member and its 10% bonus, that becomes $594 plus $198, so $792.
At Preferred Plus and 25%, $675 plus $225, so $900.
At Preferred Honors and 50%, $810 plus $270, so $1,080.
At Premier and 75%, $945 plus $315, so $1,260.
The spread from bottom to top is $468 a year on $30,000 of spending. That is real money, but note the shape of it: the jump from Member to Preferred Plus is $108, while the jump from Preferred Honors to Premier is $180 and requires a further $900,000 in balances. The program rewards the wealthy disproportionately, which is the design rather than an accident.
For most households the actionable range is Member to Preferred Plus, and the question is whether $30,000 can sit at Bank of America without costing you elsewhere.
Business Customers Are on a Separate Track
Preferred Rewards for Business stayed in place when the personal program changed, and Bank of America said details on the business side would follow.
So if your relationship with the bank is through a business account, the tiers and thresholds described here do not necessarily apply to you. Check the business program terms rather than assuming the personal redesign carried across. Business balances also do not generally count toward personal tier qualification, and vice versa.
Who Gains and Who Lost Out
The Member tier is the clear win. Customers with no significant deposit balance previously got no bonus at all and now get 10%. On $30,000 of annual card spend that is a few hundred dollars of found money for doing nothing.
The group that lost ground sits between $20,000 and $29,999. Under the old Preferred Rewards ladder that balance qualified for Gold and a 25% bonus. Under BofA Rewards it falls into Member at 10%.
Bank of America built in a soft landing: existing Gold and Platinum members keep their old benefits for at least six months after the May transition, which puts the earliest change in late November 2026. If you are in that band, you have a decision to make before then, and we cover it in detail in what happened to Preferred Rewards.
The top of the ladder also restructured. The old top tier was Platinum Honors at $100,000. The new top tier is Premier at $1 million, which splits the old cohort in two: $100,000 to $999,999 now sits at Preferred Honors with a 50% bonus rather than the 75% those customers previously received.
How It Compares
Against Chase Ultimate Rewards, the trade is straightforward. Bank of America pays you more for keeping balances with the bank. Chase pays you more for how you redeem, through transfer partners that can push points well above a fixed cent-per-point value.
If you have $100,000-plus with Bank of America and Merrill, a 50% bonus on every card purchase is a large, reliable return that requires no redemption skill. If you have modest balances but you are willing to learn transfer partners, Chase's ceiling is higher. Our head-to-head on the two programs works through the comparison properly.
The programs are not mutually exclusive, and for many people the answer is to hold cards in both ecosystems.
Getting Started
If you already had Preferred Rewards, you were mapped across automatically and there is nothing to do. Check which tier you landed in through the mobile app or online banking.
If you are a Bank of America checking customer who did not previously qualify, you can enroll now. Benefits activate within 30 days of enrollment.
Then pick the card that matches your spending rather than the one with the highest headline rate. If your spending concentrates in one category, Customized Cash Rewards at 3% in your chosen category beats a flat rate. If it is spread evenly, Unlimited Cash Rewards at 1.5% on everything is simpler and usually wins. Our roundup of which Bank of America card to hold works through the choice.
Mistakes Worth Avoiding
Four patterns cost people money in this program.
Assuming you are in the entry tier. Merrill balances count, and plenty of people have an old rollover IRA there they have not thought about in years. Check the combined figure before concluding you are at Member.
Chasing a tier with cash. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the expensive one. If the money would earn meaningfully more elsewhere, the interest you forgo usually exceeds the rewards you gain.
Using the wrong card for the category. The bonus multiplies whatever the card earns, so it amplifies a good card choice and an average one equally. A 75% bonus on 1.5% is 2.625%; a 10% bonus on 3% is 3.3%. The entry tier with the right card beats the top tier with the wrong one.
Forgetting to set the Customized Cash category. That card earns 3% in a category you select, and it defaults to one you may not spend in. It can be changed once a month. An unset category is the most common way people leave money on the table here.
Bottom Line
BofA Rewards pays a 10% to 75% bonus on Bank of America credit card earnings, scaled to the balances you keep with the bank. The entry tier is new and requires no minimum, which is the genuinely good news in this redesign.
Do not move cash to reach a tier without running the interest you give up against the rewards you gain, because that trade usually loses. Do check whether balances you already hold, particularly invested Merrill accounts, put you in a higher tier than you realized.
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