The no annual fee BMO CashBack Mastercard is a great option for the lower income bracket thanks to its welcome offer & earn rate

Today we continue our series of posts that review some of the card offerings from BMO. The past posts have focused on their higher end travel cards so we haven't really looked at their cash back or no fee cards. We do get quite a bit of feedback and requests from our readers about cards for those in lower income brackets since much of our focus is for the higher end cards. It's true that many of the cards in today's market require you to have $60,000 to $80,000 in annual personal income to qualify for them. So what happens if you don't make that much money? Can you still be rewarded? Absolutely. There are lots of options for rewards credit cards that have lower or no published income requirements at all. From travel points to retail points to cash back you have lots to choose from. One of BMO's cards, the BMO CashBack Mastercard is a great no fee card option that allows you to have flexible redemption on whatever you like and doesn't have high income requirements.

If you don't travel much or you want to be in full control of how you use your credit cards rewards then the cash back route is ideal. In the world no fee cash back credit cards, the BMO CashBack Mastercard is definitely one of the more attractive cash back cards in the market thanks to its current welcome offer and everyday earn rate. There are very few no fee cash back cards that offer an increased welcome offer of 5% like this card. Most are quite a bit lower or have no welcome offer at all. The 5% featured on this card is good for the first three months of the card and maxes out at $100 in rewards and it is not limited to select merchant categories. That means you'll earn 5% back on the first $2,000 in spending in the first three months or about $666. 67 of spending per month.

On the earn side, the 1% cashback is average or better than average when comparing to competitors offering similar no fee cash back cards. There are several cards that will earn more on everyday spending but their welcome offer is much lower so the trade off could be worth it. Some other cards will offer more in select categories but then outside of those categories they will earn less. For example 2% back on groceries but then only 0.5% on everything else. Having the flat rate of 1% removes confusion and depending on your spending habits will actually earn you more cash back than a card that has higher category bonuses and lower 'all other spending' rates.  Sometimes it is just nice to know that you'll earn a flat rate on everything.

Another reason you may want to look at this card is its current introductory rate on balance transfers. Yes we all hate it when we have to carry a balance on our credit cards and it hurts getting dinged with interest rates near or more than 20%. The BMO CashBack Mastercard has a limited time offer right now of only 1.99% interest on balance transfers (plus a 1% fee) for 9 months. This could just be what you need to get rid of a balance earning a high interest rate, move it to this card and focus on paying it off in those nine months.

Here are the details for the card:

This post was sponsored by BMO. The views and opinions expressed in this post however, are purely those of Rewards Canada.