Interesting: A New, Single Store Credit Card That Rewards the Sales Tax Back

Credit card issuers are in a battle for customers and they often copy each other with benefits while trying to introduce something maybe a little different. Talk about different, how about a credit card who’s big feature is to give the sales tax back as a rebate on the card for future spending?

The New B&H Payboo Credit Card That Issues Rewards for Sales Tax

Link: New B&H Payboo Credit Card 

That is what the newly announced B&H Payboo Credit Card does for customers of the mega electronics store. If you aren’t familiar with B&H, they are a major store in New York City that sells pretty much anything you could ever want for video, audio, photography, and even computers and entertainment. The superstore is just amazing to visit but they do sell online as well.

Until last year, they only charged sales tax in NY and NJ (since sales tax used to only apply when the store had a physical presence in the state). But now they are required to charge the sales tax in many more states and many people who had been loyal customers to B&H (in part to the fact that they did not have to pay sales tax at the time of purchase) had become frustrated with this. B&H came up with an interesting solution and partnered with Synchrony Bank to create their own credit card.

Here are the details of this new B&H Payboo credit card:

• It is a credit card with a revolving limit
• It is only for use at B&H online, in-store, or over the phone
• The amount paid in sales tax is immediately applied as a reward
• This reward only applies for orders that are taxed (if you are in a state that currently does not charge sales tax for B&H orders or your order is tax-exempt, you won’t receive a reward amount)
• Purchase APR is 29.99%

Should You Get the B&H Payboo Credit Card?

This is a great new card for anyone that spends a lot of money at B&H, which would include media professionals for the most part. However, remember that this card cannot be used anywhere else and that you will not get things like price protection, extended warranty, or other benefits that you could get with other credit cards. Also, if you would normally put a large purchase like something form B&H on an interest-free card, this is definitely not the card to do that with since it has 29.99% interest!

So, Why is the B&H Payboo Card “Interesting”

What I find interesting with this card is that it is making a move that no one else has made. While a sales tax reward as a credit card benefit wouldn’t be a big deal for a store card like a Macy’s card, it is for B&H where an average order could exceed $2,000-$3,000.

This means that B&H, as a retailer, is interested in continuing to draw their customers and willing to reward them with a reward that could be between 8-10% back on their purchase! That is, by far, the biggest reward you will get for shopping at stores like B&H.

I think this is interesting because there are some issuers that are going to see B&H purchases go away – and that, again, can be a huge average bill. While Amex has there Business Gold card that has 4X rewards in some categories that B&H sells in (but they don’t have the 4X rewards for B&H), other issuers do not come close to offering the rewards for shopping at B&H that this new Payboo card will.

So, I wonder how much spending some issuers may lose to this new card? If it is significant enough for, say Amex, with their business cards, maybe they will extend their 4X rewards to B&H. That would make things more interesting for savvy travelers as Membership Reward points could be worth close/around 2 cents per point.

While I recognize that almost none of the readers here will be getting this card, I do like the way that B&H is thinking with this and I applaud their creativity. Some actual issuers seem to think that copying others with a single benefit is a feature so it is nice to have some out-of-the-box thinking with rewards.