Ahead of Prime Big Deal Days on 6-7 October, The Points Guy has ranked seven credit cards for anyone whose spending leans heavily on Amazon — and the top choice is unsurprisingly the card Amazon itself co-brands.
The Prime Visa leads the pack. With no annual fee (though you need a Prime membership at $139 a year), it earns 5% back on Amazon.com, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods and travel booked through Chase Travel, plus 2% on gas, transit, ride-hailing and restaurants. New cardholders get a $150 Amazon gift card on approval, and rotating promotions can push earnings to 10% or more on select items.
Don't have Prime? The Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards card can actually beat it in year one: pick "online shopping" as your category and earn 6% back on up to $2,500 in combined bonus spending each quarter, settling to 3% after that — all with no annual fee. There's a $200 bonus after spending $1,000 in the first 90 days, but watch the quarterly cap; anything over it earns just 1%.
The Amex Blue Cash Everyday is another fee-free contender, earning 3% at U.S. online retailers on the first $6,000 per calendar year, with the same rate at supermarkets and gas stations and up to $200 cash back after $2,000 of spending in six months.
If you'd rather earn points and miles, the Capital One Venture X ($395 annual fee) and Venture Rewards ($95) both earn 2 miles per dollar on everything, including Amazon. TPG values Capital One miles at 1.85 cents each, working out to roughly a 3.7% return on Amazon spending — plus hefty welcome offers of 75,000 bonus miles after $4,000 spent in three months.
Two simple no-fee options round out the list. The Chase Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5% cash back on everything, but pairing it with a premium Chase card lets you convert rewards into transferable Ultimate Rewards points, worth about 3.1% on Amazon by TPG's maths. The Wells Fargo Active Cash keeps it even simpler: a flat 2% on all purchases, with a $100 bonus after $500 in the first three months.
Why it matters for travellers: if a chunk of your holiday spending — luggage, tech, last-minute essentials — already flows through Amazon, the right card turns that into free flights or hotel nights. Points collectors should look at the Capital One or Chase options, where rewards can be transferred to airline and hotel partners rather than locked in as cash. One catch worth knowing: both the Prime Visa and Freedom Unlimited are Chase cards subject to the issuer's 5/24 rule, so application restrictions could decide which card you can actually get. With welcome offers live across the board ahead of the October sale days, the timing's decent if your wallet has room.
