On May 27, 2026, Bank of America retired the Preferred Rewards name and launched BofA Rewards - a leaner four-tier loyalty program that replaces the previous five-tier structure. The new program reaches millions more clients, but it also raises the bar at the top end. If you hold a BofA credit card, the change directly affects how much your earn rate is boosted on every swipe.
BofA Rewards goes live today, May 27, 2026. PointBagel's engine support for the new tier structure went live today, too. No lag between the program change and the math we run on your portfolio. Below: what changed at BofA, what it means for your wallet, and what we shipped so the numbers on your dashboard match what you'll actually earn from day one.
The new tier structure
BofA Rewards has four personal tiers, gated on your three-month combined average daily balance across qualifying Bank of America deposit and Merrill investment accounts:
| Tier | Combined balance | Earn boost on eligible BofA cards |
|---|---|---|
| Member | Less than $30,000 | +10% |
| Preferred Plus | $30,000 to $100,000 | +25% |
| Preferred Honors | $100,000 to $1,000,000 | +50% |
| Premier | $1,000,000+ | +75% |
The boost applies to BofA-issued credit cards in the BofA Rewards program: Premium Rewards, Customized Cash Rewards, Travel Rewards, and Unlimited Cash Rewards. Co-brand cards on Bank of America's network (Alaska, Atmos, Spirit, Air France/KLM) are excluded.
Business cards are governed by a separate program called "Preferred Rewards for Business" with its own thresholds:
| Business tier | Business deposits | Boost |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | $20,000 - $49,999 | +25% |
| Platinum | $50,000 - $99,999 | +50% |
| Platinum Honors | $100,000+ | +75% |
There is no 10% Member tier for business and no $1M Premier-equivalent. The business program tops out at Platinum Honors at $100K.
Sources: BofA Rewards program page, press release, Preferred Rewards for Business.
Old tier to new tier: where you land
If you were enrolled in Preferred Rewards before the rebrand, BofA mapped your existing tier as follows:
| Old tier (Preferred Rewards) | New tier (BofA Rewards) |
|---|---|
| Gold | Preferred Plus |
| Platinum | Preferred Plus |
| Platinum Honors | Preferred Honors |
| Diamond Honors | Premier |
The two changes that matter for cardholders:
- The 75% tier moved up. Under the old program, Platinum Honors at $100K combined gave the top 75% boost. Under BofA Rewards, the 75% boost requires $1M+ (Premier). Anyone in the old $100K-$1M band drops from 75% to 50% on a forward basis once the grandfather window closes.
- A new bottom tier exists. Member (+10%) opens at $0 combined - any qualifying BofA or Merrill account makes you eligible. Cardholders who weren't enrolled in Preferred Rewards previously now get a 10% boost just for having a checking account.
How and when BofA reassesses your tier
BofA reviews your balance monthly. If your three-month average pushes you into a higher tier, they move you up automatically. Downgrades only happen at your annual anniversary, and they come with a three-month grace period to rebuild your balance before the lower tier kicks in. New enrollees get daily balance reviews for the first 30 days.
This matters because the engine's earn-rate math depends on the tier you actually have at the time you swipe, not the tier you used to have or the one you're about to qualify for.
Grandfathering: who's protected and for how long
BofA isn't yanking the old 75% rate from existing $100K-$1M Platinum Honors members on day one. Existing Preferred Rewards members are grandfathered into their old tier until their first enrollment anniversary after November 2026. So if your enrollment anniversary is in October, you keep your old tier through October 2027. New credit card bonuses tied to your old tier apply for another three months past that anniversary, which for some accounts pushes the transition as late as January 2028.
If you fall in the $100K-$1M Platinum Honors band, that grandfather window is the difference between 75% and 50% on every BofA card you hold. Worth knowing exactly when yours ends.
What the change does to your earn rate
The math is straightforward: BofA Rewards multiplies your base earn rate on eligible cards by 1 + (boost / 100). A few concrete examples on the Premium Rewards card (2x travel and dining, 1.5x everything else):
| Your tier | Travel and dining | Everything else |
|---|---|---|
| Not enrolled | 2.00x | 1.50x |
| Member (+10%) | 2.20x | 1.65x |
| Preferred Plus (+25%) | 2.50x | 1.88x |
| Preferred Honors (+50%) | 3.00x | 2.25x |
| Premier (+75%) | 3.50x | 2.63x |
For a household that spends $15,000 a year on dining and travel through a Premium Rewards card, moving from "not enrolled" to Preferred Honors is roughly $150 extra in points per year on those categories alone. At Premier, it's about $225.
The Customized Cash Rewards earning cap math is more nuanced: the 3% bonus rate on your chosen category caps at $2,500 per quarter combined with grocery, then drops to 1%. The boost applies symmetrically - at Preferred Honors, the 3% becomes 4.5% up to the cap and the post-cap 1% becomes 1.5%, not flat 1%. Most portfolio calculators don't model the post-cap fallback correctly. We do.
What we shipped in PointBagel today
The boost only matters if your tools reflect it. Most apps that track BofA cards either ignore the multiplier entirely or apply it inconsistently across surfaces. Everything below went live today, the same day BofA Rewards launched:
A tier picker in Settings
Tell us your current BofA Rewards tier and your Preferred Rewards for Business tier (if you have business deposits). The two are stored separately because the programs are separate - a user with Honors personal and Gold business gets the correct boost on each card type, not a guess based on one.
Every earn-rate surface in the app respects the boost
Your dashboard's "best card for dining" widget, the comparison table, the card detail page's earning rates, the "what if I added this card?" simulator, the product change analyzer, the recommendations engine - all of them route through the same multiplier helper. The number you see on one page matches the number on every other page.
Cap-aware boost math
The Customized Cash post-cap fallback rate is boosted symmetrically with the bonus rate, so a Preferred Honors user sees 4.5% on bonus-category spend up to the cap and 1.5% after - not the "4.5% then flat 1%" mistake.
Co-brand cards are excluded
Alaska, Atmos, Spirit, and Air France/KLM BofA-issued cards earn their headline rates regardless of tier. The BofA Rewards program doesn't apply to them. Our engine knows.
A re-prompt cadence so the math stays current
BofA reviews tiers monthly for upgrades and annually for downgrades. If you set your tier and don't touch it for 90 days, we surface a reminder to re-verify. We also have hard prompts staged for the two grandfather expiration dates (November 2026 and January 2028) so longtime Preferred Rewards holders don't end up over-projecting their earn rate after their grandfather window closes.
Privacy on household plans
Your tier never leaks to other household members. Premier tier implies $1M+ in BofA deposits - that's a wealth signal that shouldn't be visible to your spouse's account, your housemate's account, or anyone but you.
Pills on cards that need a tier set
If you hold a BofA Rewards eligible card and haven't told us your tier yet, your dashboard card tile shows a small "Set BofA tier" prompt with a one-click link to the settings page. No more silently under-counting your earn rate because you forgot to update a setting.
If you hold a BofA card, here's what to do
- Check what tier you landed in. Sign in to Online Banking and open the BofA Rewards (or Preferred Rewards) dashboard - your current tier is on that page.
- Set the tier in PointBagel Settings. Go to Bank and brokerage relationships and pick your BofA Rewards tier. If you have business deposits, set your Preferred Rewards for Business tier too.
- Check your grandfather window. If you were $100K-$1M Platinum Honors before, write down your enrollment anniversary - that's when your 75% boost ends and you drop to 50%. We'll prompt you to re-check around that date.
- Re-run your portfolio. Your earn rates on BofA cards just changed. The right card for some categories may have shifted, the annual fee ROI on Premium Rewards Elite changes if you moved tiers, and the answer to "should I add Customized Cash?" depends on the boost you actually get.
A note on accuracy
We model the boost based on what you tell us. We can't observe your actual BofA tier - that data lives in Bank of America's systems. If you pick the wrong tier, the math is wrong until you re-confirm. The re-prompt at 90 days and the hard prompts at reassessment dates catch most cases, but the ground truth still depends on your self-report. We'd rather be honest about that limit than pretend our numbers are something they're not.
The flip side: the math we do downstream of that self-report is exact. No estimates, no rounding artifacts, no missing the cap fallback. If you tell us your tier accurately, the earn rates on every PointBagel surface will match what BofA actually credits to your account on every swipe.
If you want to see what BofA Rewards does to your portfolio, sign in and check the recommendations page. Or create a free account - one auto-synced BofA card is free forever.
