We now have two airlines on the cusp of launching a debit card product. We heard that Southwest would be launching one a couple of months ago and that is publicly mentioned by Southwest here.
Now, the same bank (Sunrise Banks, a regional community bank based out of St. Paul, Minnesota, looks poised to launch a United Airlines debit card, as leaked by SoFi Insider on X.
Here are the details, which they presumably found on a webpage that wasn’t supposed to be publicly accessible.
With that monthly fee easily waived, this could be a great opportunity for incremental miles when payments by debit card are almost free but credit cards incur a substantial fee (hello, tax payments!). And while I haven’t done this since the pre-Durbin Amendment days when there were lots of rich debit card rewards, you used to be able to get cash back at a grocery store and earn points/miles. (Meaning that you buy something for $5, get $100 back, and you earn rewards on $105). I probably wouldn’t have the appetite for that slow roll game again, but I would absolutely get an account to pay taxes.
The only wildcard might be limits on charge sizes (PayPal does this with their debit card) that might make taxes impossible to pay at size.
I won’t get into the mechanics of debit cards vs. credit cards and Durbin here as I think the point is simply about the miles 🙂
Thoughts?
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