U.S. Bank Cash+® Visa Signature®

You select two categories at 5% and one everyday category at 2%, with 1% on everything else. The 5% and 2% tiers share a $2,000 combined quarterly cap. Bank of America's Customized Cash pays 6% but only for the first year and on one category; Chase Freedom Flex pays 5% but on categories Chase picks. This is the only card in this catalog paying 5% ongoing on categories you control.

The cap sets the ceiling: $2,000 a quarter at 5% is $100 a quarter, $400 a year, against $40 a quarter on a flat 2% card. So the card is worth roughly $240 a year more than a flat 2% card if you max the cap every quarter in categories you'd have spent in anyway. That's a real number, and it's also the entire upside — spending beyond the cap earns 1%, which is half the flat rate.

Categories must be chosen each quarter, which is the same maintenance task as Freedom Flex's activation with the added burden of choosing well. Forget, and the card silently drops to 1% on the spending you expected to earn 5% on.

The card also opens with 0% intro APR for 15 billing cycles, and the go-to rate is 17.74% to 27.99%. That intro period matches Bank of America Travel Rewards and TD Cash and sits six cycles behind Chase Slate.

Two categories at 5%, one everyday category at 2%, chosen by you rather than handed to you. That is a different bargain from a rotating-category card, where the issuer decides each quarter and you take what you are given: here the rate follows your spending instead of your spending chasing the rate.

The price is that you have to do it, every quarter, before the deadline. A card that pays 5% in a category you forgot to select pays 1%, and the difference over a year is the whole reason you chose this card over a flat 2%.

Both 5% categories draw on the same $2,000 of quarterly spending — about $667 a month across the two of them together. Past that, they pay the base rate for the rest of the quarter.

So the ceiling on the 5% is $100 of cash back a quarter, and the card is worth choosing when you can name two categories that between them absorb roughly $667 a month and no more. Concentrate more spending than that in them and a flat 2% card starts catching up on the excess; concentrate much less and you are not using what you selected.

Two categories at 5%, one everyday category at 2%, chosen by you rather than handed to you. That is a different bargain from a rotating-category card, where the issuer decides each quarter and you take what you are given: here the rate follows your spending instead of your spending chasing the rate.

The price is that you have to do it, every quarter, before the deadline. A card that pays 5% in a category you forgot to select pays 1%, and the difference over a year is the whole reason you chose this card over a flat 2%.

Both 5% categories draw on the same $2,000 of quarterly spending — about $667 a month across the two of them together. Past that, they pay the base rate for the rest of the quarter.

So the ceiling on the 5% is $100 of cash back a quarter, and the card is worth choosing when you can name two categories that between them absorb roughly $667 a month and no more. Concentrate more spending than that in them and a flat 2% card starts catching up on the excess; concentrate much less and you are not using what you selected.