Glossary
Credit card rewards glossary
The vocabulary of credit-card rewards and best-card results, defined in plain English. Each term links to a full explanation of how it affects which card you should swipe.
Routing
- Reward Routing
- Reward routing is the practice of automatically selecting, at the moment of purchase, the credit card in your wallet that earns the most value on that specific merchant and category.
- Sign-Up Bonus Spend Requirement
- A minimum spend requirement is the amount you must charge to a new card within a set window to earn its sign-up bonus — e.g. $4,000 in the first three months.
Rewards
- Fair Point Comparison
- Pikt converts every card's points, miles, and cash back into a single dollar figure so different reward types can be compared fairly.
- Category Multiplier
- A category multiplier is the rate at which a card earns rewards in a given spending category — e.g. 4× points on dining or 6% back at U.S. supermarkets.
- Cash-Equivalent Value
- Cash-equivalent value is the dollar amount a points or miles balance is worth at a chosen redemption rate, used to compare reward currencies against plain cash back.
- Catch-All Rate
- A catch-all rate is the flat reward rate a card earns on purchases that do not qualify for any category bonus — for example 2% back or 1.5× points on everything else.
Payments
- Best-Card Recommendation at Checkout
- Pikt recognizes where you're paying and names the best card to use — online via Pikt Checkout before you click pay today; in stores, Pikt Nearby will surface it on your lock screen when you're ready to pay (coming next).
- Merchant Category
- A merchant category is how card networks classify what a store sells — for example, restaurants, grocery stores, or gas stations.
- Checkout Approval
- Checkout approval is the instant yes-or-no when you pay with a card, before the money actually moves hours or days later.
- Interchange
- Interchange is the fee a merchant's bank pays the card-issuing bank on each transaction; it is the primary funding source for most credit-card rewards.
Product
- Card Velocity
- Card velocity is the pace at which you open new credit cards over a rolling window, which issuers use to approve or deny applications (for example, Chase's 5/24 rule).