How we verify

Rewards information goes stale fast, and a lot of what circulates online is copied from somewhere else that was already out of date. Here is how we try to avoid adding to that.

The order we prefer sources in

1. The issuer's own product or card listing page.
2. The airline's or hotel group's own newsroom or program page.
3. An established independent tracker that says when it checked.

Where a figure comes from the third category, the review says so by name.

The three labels

Verified on issuer pages means the key facts on that page, usually the official name, annual fee and current public welcome offer, were read on an issuer's or program's own page on the date shown.

Partly verified means some facts came from an issuer page and others from an independent source, or that the issuer's page would not render the figures we needed. The note on the page says which is which.

Not verified means we could not confirm the card's current terms at all. Those pages deliberately carry almost no detail. A blank field is information: it tells you to go and check.

Things we could not do in this build

American Express product pages would not open for us, so every Amex figure on this site comes from an independent source rather than Amex itself. Transfer bonuses sit behind bank logins, so none of the bonuses we list was confirmed on a bank's own transfer screen.

Where offers disagree

When two credible sources give different figures, we record both rather than picking one. The Atmos Rewards Summit welcome offer is the clearest current example: Bank of America's own page and several trackers do not match, and we say so on the card's page instead of choosing.

Dates

Every card page, news story and deal carries the date it was last updated. If that date is old, treat the content as old.