Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card

Unlimited 2% cash back on all purchases. No rotating categories to activate, no self-selection, no quarterly cap, no first-year rate that steps down afterwards. Against Bank of America's Unlimited Cash Rewards — 2% for a year, then 1.5% — this pays the same rate permanently.

The value of that is easy to underrate. Every category structure in this catalog carries a failure mode: an unactivated quarter, a cap you hit in month two, a category that stopped matching how you spend. A flat rate has none, which is why for most people a 2% card beats a theoretically richer card they don't manage perfectly.

Wells Fargo publishes 18.49%, 24.49% or 28.49% variable — three discrete rates rather than a continuous range. That's more informative than it looks: you'll be assigned one of three tiers based on your credit profile, so the realistic question is which tier you land in rather than where in a spread you fall.

The card also opens with 0% intro APR for 12 months on purchases. That's the shortest intro period among the flat 2% cards here — Citi Double Cash runs 18 months, though on balance transfers rather than purchases — so this is the better card of the two if the interest-free window is for spending rather than for clearing an existing balance.

Wells Fargo Active Cash, Citi Double Cash, PNC Cash Unlimited and TD Double Up all pay 2% on everything with no categories. On the rate alone there is nothing to choose between them, so the decision is made by the three things around it: how the 2% is paid, what introductory period comes with it, and what rate you land on afterwards.

Active Cash pays its 2% in one piece rather than in halves, which is the clearest of the four - Citi Double Cash splits it into 1% at purchase and 1% at payment, and TD Double Up pays as a statement credit rather than cash. If you want the simplest possible version of a 2% card, this is it.

0% for 12 months is real but it is the shortest introductory period among the cards in this catalog that offer one - Chase Slate and Wells Fargo Reflect run to 21 months, Citi Double Cash to 18, and a group of five sits at 15. If a balance is the reason you are looking, a year is not much runway.

Afterwards the rate is one of three published tiers: 18.49%, 24.49% or 28.49%. Three known numbers is more informative than a range, and the best of them is roughly a point above the floor of Citi Double Cash. On a card whose purpose is to earn 2% on money you clear every month, none of that should ever apply to you.

Wells Fargo Active Cash, Citi Double Cash, PNC Cash Unlimited and TD Double Up all pay 2% on everything with no categories. On the rate alone there is nothing to choose between them, so the decision is made by the three things around it: how the 2% is paid, what introductory period comes with it, and what rate you land on afterwards.

Active Cash pays its 2% in one piece rather than in halves, which is the clearest of the four - Citi Double Cash splits it into 1% at purchase and 1% at payment, and TD Double Up pays as a statement credit rather than cash. If you want the simplest possible version of a 2% card, this is it.

0% for 12 months is real but it is the shortest introductory period among the cards in this catalog that offer one - Chase Slate and Wells Fargo Reflect run to 21 months, Citi Double Cash to 18, and a group of five sits at 15. If a balance is the reason you are looking, a year is not much runway.

Afterwards the rate is one of three published tiers: 18.49%, 24.49% or 28.49%. Three known numbers is more informative than a range, and the best of them is roughly a point above the floor of Citi Double Cash. On a card whose purpose is to earn 2% on money you clear every month, none of that should ever apply to you.