Affiliate & Advertising Disclosure

PointBagel is operated by Point Alchemy, LLC, an Arizona limited liability company doing business as PointBagel. This page explains how we make money and how that affects (and does not affect) the content you see on the site. It is published in compliance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR Part 255 (“Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”).

1. How we make money

PointBagel has three potential revenue sources. Subscriptions fund the product today; affiliate commissions apply only to some cards and some award-search tools, and only once a relationship is live:

• Subscriptions. Our Plus and Pro plans are paid monthly or annually. Subscription revenue is the primary funding source for the product and is what allows us to operate independently of any single issuer or network.
• Credit card affiliate commissions. When you click an “Apply” button on PointBagel and you are subsequently approved for that credit card, we may receive a one-time commission from the card issuer or from an affiliate network. This applies to some cards only: we will not have an affiliate relationship for every card, and where we have none, that card's Apply button still takes you to the issuer's own application page and we earn nothing from it. Commission amounts vary by card and are set by the network - we do not negotiate them on a per-user basis. Approval decisions are made entirely by the card issuer; PointBagel does not participate in underwriting and cannot guarantee approval.
• Award-search partner commissions. When you follow a link from PointBagel to an independent award-search tool (such as point.me, Seats.aero, or PointsYeah) and you subsequently subscribe to that tool, we may receive a commission from the tool or its affiliate network, at no extra cost to you. We are not an award-search or booking engine and do not sell those subscriptions; we link out to these independent services as a convenience. A commission never changes which tools we recommend, and where we have no affiliate relationship the link still takes you to the tool and we earn nothing.

2. How compensation affects what you see

It does not affect rankings or recommendations. Our recommendation engine ranks credit cards by the value they would add to your specific portfolio - using your spending patterns, owned-card overlap, point valuations, transfer-partner alignment, and welcome offer math. The same card ranking algorithm runs whether or not we earn a commission for that card, and whether or not we have any affiliate relationship for it. Cards we have no commercial relationship with are eligible to rank #1 in your recommendations and frequently do. The same principle applies to the award-search tools we link out to: which tools we suggest is based on their fit for a given redemption, not on whether we have an affiliate relationship with them.

It does affect which cards have an Apply button. When we have an active affiliate link for a card, the Apply button routes through a tracked URL so the issuer or network can attribute the click. When we do not have an affiliate link, the Apply button (when shown) sends you to the issuer's public application page through a PointBagel redirect; no affiliate network is involved and no third party receives your information. In both cases, the URL you land on is the issuer's real application page - we do not insert interstitial pages or modify the application itself.

It does not affect content, education, or accuracy. Card benefit details, transfer ratios, point valuations, rule explanations, and editorial articles are produced independently of any commercial relationship. Where we are wrong, we update the underlying data; we do not adjust accuracy to favor a partner.

3. Networks and partners

Where we have an affiliate relationship for a card or an award-search tool, we may earn a commission through one or more of the networks below. We are not live with every network, and we will not have a relationship for every card or tool. Membership in a network changes over time; we update this list as relationships begin or end.

• Bankrate Credit Card Affiliate Network
• CardRatings
• Red Ventures (CreditCards.com)
• Impact
• CJ Affiliate
• Sovrn Commerce
• Direct issuer affiliate programs (e.g., American Express)

We are not exclusive to any single network. When more than one partner offers terms for the same card, we route the Apply button through whichever currently offers the best terms. Any commission we earn is paid by the network or issuer; you pay nothing extra and the terms of your card application are unchanged.

4. Editorial independence

No issuer, network, or third party reviews our content before publication, and no partner has the ability to require us to recommend, suppress, or change coverage of any card. If a partner asks us to remove an accurate statement about a card and we refuse, we accept the risk that they will end the relationship. That has not happened, but it is the principle we operate under.

5. Approval is never guaranteed

PointBagel's Pro tier surfaces issuer-published velocity, lifetime-bonus, and product-conflict rules so you can make an informed decision about which card fits your situation. These rules are based on issuer disclosures and patterns documented by the rewards-credit-card community. They do not guarantee approval: issuers also evaluate income, credit history, utilization, internal scoring, and other factors that PointBagel does not have visibility into. We help you avoid the most common avoidable denials; we do not override the underwriter.

6. Identifying affiliate links

Per FTC guidance, links that may earn us a commission are tagged withrel="sponsored" at the HTML level. Apply buttons on PointBagel carry a small disclosure tooltip when an affiliate relationship exists, and links to award-search partners carry a visible disclosure noting that we may earn a commission. When affiliate links are live, you can also identify them by their destination - they route through /api/go/ on this domain before redirecting to the card issuer or partner tool.

7. Questions

If anything on this page is unclear or you believe we have made an error, email us at [email protected] or visit our contact page. We respond to every question and update this page when our practices change.