How to get a no annual fee, no FTF, 3% custom category credit card

Bank of America’s Customized Cash Rewards lets you pick one category for 3% back — online shopping, dining, gas, travel, drugstores, or home improvement. But the card itself carries a 3% foreign transaction fee. Not great for non-USD spending.

Here’s the quirk: when you product change from a no-FTF card to another Bank of America card, the resulting card keeps the no-FTF treatment, regardless of what the new card’s terms say.

The end result: a no-annual-fee, no-FTF, 3% custom category Customized Cash Rewards. The starting point is the Bank of America Travel Rewards card.

How it works

When Bank of America processes a product change, certain benefits carry over from the old card to the new one.

Travel Rewards is a no-annual-fee, no-FTF card. Product change it to Customized Cash Rewards, and the new card won’t have an FTF either.

Bank of America’s product change rules are also pretty relaxed. After holding a co-branded card or an in-house card for one year, you can product change it to any in-house card.

Step 1: Apply for Travel Rewards

Travel Rewards itself is a straightforward travel card. 1.5x points on everything, no annual fee, no FTF. $250 sign-up bonus.

This card isn’t meant to be a long-term keeper. It’s a stepping stone to Customized Cash Rewards. Grab the SUB, then make your move after a year.

On the holding period: @madafaka on the forums reported a counterexample in November 2024 — they successfully product changed before hitting the one-year mark. The process: called the number on the back of the card and asked for a product change; the rep said they couldn’t do it and transferred to the Sales Team; less than a week later, the card art in the app had already changed. Their Travel Rewards was opened in October 2023 and product changed in August 2024 — less than 11 months. If your rep says you must wait a full year, hang up and call again.

Step 2: Product change to Customized Cash Rewards

After holding the card for a year, call the number on the back and request a product change from Travel Rewards to Customized Cash Rewards. Once the product change goes through, the new card continues to have no annual fee, continues to have no FTF, and now you have the 3% custom category.

You can change your chosen category once per month, in online banking or the app. Of the six categories, online shopping has the broadest coverage — most people’s default pick.

If you have a Preferred Rewards relationship with Bank of America, that 3% gets a boost. Platinum Honors tier adds a 75% bonus, pushing the custom category all the way to 5.25%. A no-annual-fee, no-FTF 5.25% cashback card.

You can also run this mechanism in reverse: take any no-annual-fee Bank of America card you have, product change it to Travel Rewards to “pick up” the no-FTF trait, then product change again to your target card — and it inherits no-FTF too. Even if what you ultimately want is the Mastercard version of Customized Cash Rewards, no problem. The product change rule is Mastercard-to-Mastercard, Visa-to-Visa, regardless of the specific product.

Advanced: Getting multiple no-FTF Customized Cash Rewards

If you apply for multiple Travel Rewards or co-branded cards to harvest the sign-up bonuses, then product change each one to Customized Cash Rewards after a year — you now have multiple Customized Cash Rewards cards, each with a different chosen category, covering all your high-spend categories, all with no FTF.

Bank of America doesn’t have a hard limit on product changes. The 2/3/4 rule only constrains new card approvals. Just watch your application pace over the past 24 months each time you apply for a new card.

Cards product changed to Customized Cash Rewards usually keep the original card number, so the whole process doesn’t hurt your credit history length.

Further Reading

• DP Thread: Best practice for getting a broad-coverage / no-FTF high cashback Bank of America card via product change (Chinese)
• Bank of America Travel Rewards credit card overview (Chinese)
• Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards credit card overview (Chinese)
• Bank of America FTF avoidance trick: product change from a no-FTF card (Chinese)
• Bank of America product change / credit limit guide (Chinese)