Discover $50 Promotion & Discover Holiday Promotion

With the economy weakening, experts are predicting horrible retail sales in the fourth quarter. We’re talking downright dreadful. Knowing that, stores are starting to roll out a lot of their Black Friday promotions much earlier… making it Black November. (The whole “Black”-[day of the week] phrase is so overused…. with retail, it’s good; with stocks, it’s bad; so confusing!)

If we’ve learned nothing else, if people spend less, credit card companies earn less… so they too are pulling out the big guns. Discover is reintroducing its typical $20 on $200 holiday promotion and adding a new $50 cashback bonus promotion to new cardmembers.

Discover Holiday Promotion

This holiday mall promotion is the same one they’ve been running for several years. At select malls, you can get a $20 gift card for ever $200 you spend up to a limit of five cards per account ($100 in gift cards on $1,000 of spending). The promotion expires on January 4th, 2009 so you’ll have time to use it on after-Christmas sales too.

In years past, you would spend the money and then take the receipts to the mall’s customer service desk. They would stamp the receipt (which still allows you to return the items) and then issue you the gift cards. It’s a pretty hot promotion because that’s an instant discount of 10%, since you can use the gift card nearly anywhere.

Discover $50 Promotion

Discover has announced a new promotion with the Discover More card where you can get a $50 cashback bonus when you spend $500 within the first three months of activating the card. It’s one of the most generous cash bonuses available right now for new credit card accounts.

18% Cashback

You can combine these two promotions together to get 18% cashback on $500 in purchases! Spending $500 at the mall will net you $40 in gift cards ($20 on the $400 of spending) plus the $50 cashback new account bonus - $90 on $500 is a nice 18% cashback.