Is Delta Debit Card from Truist Worth It?

For several years, SunTrust issued the Delta debit card. After the merger of SunTrust and BB&T bank (press release), the newly emerged bank Truist continued to offer Delta Debit cards. A long time ago Delta debit cards used to be good but they underwent various heavy nerfs back in 2015 (DoC, VFTW, MMS). Now, keeping the past aside, we look to answer a simple question – are the Delta debit cards from Truist worth it today?

Truist issues two Delta debit cards – one for personal users and another for business users. Anyone with a Truist personal (or business) checking account is eligible for these cards.

Delta Debit Card for Consumer (Personal) Use

https://www.truist.com/checking/debit-cards

1. Earn 5,000 bonus miles after your first qualifying purchase
2. Earn 1 mile in rewards for every $2 you spend using the Delta SkyMiles Debit Card
3. Earn additional miles on direct Delta purchases such as tickets and in-flight purchases
4. $95 annual fee (may be reduced depending on your banking status)

Reducing Annual Fee on Consumer Delta Debit Card

Annual fee tiers are defined as follows:

1. balance of less than $25,000 is charged an annual fee of $95
2. balance of $25,000 and less than $100,000 is charged an annual fee of $75 and
3. balance of $100,000 or more is charged an annual fee of $25.

The annual fee is discounted to 0 For Truist Wealth and Truist Asset Management Checking account clients (see page 7 in this document for detail or check this page). Truist Wealth Checking is available to clients with $1,000,000 (1 million) or more in qualifying personal investments with Truist (see page 2 in this document for detail).

Further Terms and Conditions:

1. The Delta SkyMiles® Debit Card annual fee is charged 45 days after the open date of the card.
2. For Truist One, existing Truist Dimension and existing Signature Advantage Checking accounts, the initial annual fee will be based on the sum of highest monthly average ledger balance of your combined eligible Truist consumer deposit balances on that date. Eligible Truist consumer deposit balances includes all checking, savings, Certificate of Deposit, Individual Retirement Account and/or all consumer investments through Truist Investment Services, Inc. titled in the owner or the coowners name. Thereafter, for Truist One, existing Truist Dimension and existing Signature Advantage Checking, we will use the highest average monthly ledger balance of the 3 most previous months to determine your annual fee.

I have highlighted some terms to note that you don’t need to maintain a high balance all through the year.

Monthly Miles Earned Cap on Personal Delta Debit Card

1. Delta SkyMiles Debit card issued with Truist One, existing Truist Dimension, existing Signature
   Advantage, Truist Wealth and Truist Asset Management Account Checking accounts earn a maximum of 4.,000 miles per card for each 30-day period
2. Delta SkyMiles Debit Cards issued on any other Consumer Checking account earn a maximum
   of 2,000 miles per card within each 30-day period
3. The New Account Bonus, additional miles bonus for a Direct Delta Purchase, and/or certain
   promotional miles offers are excluded from the monthly cap.

Since Truist One is available for anyone to signup, your 30-day cap should be 4,000 miles.

Delta Debit Card for Small Businesses

https://www.truist.com/small-business/banking/delta-debit-card

1. Earn 5,000 bonus miles after your first qualifying purchase
2. Earn 1 mile in rewards for every $2 you spend using the Delta SkyMiles Debit Card
3. Earn additional miles on direct Delta purchases such as tickets and in-flight purchases
4. $95 annual fee (may be reduced depending on your banking status)

Reducing Annual Fee on Small Business Delta Debit Card

Annual fee tiers are defined as follows:

1. balance of less than $25,000 is charged an annual fee of $120,
2. balance of $25,000 and less than $50,000 is charged an annual fee of $90 and
3. balance of $50,000 or more is charged an annual fee of $60.

Monthly Miles Earned Cap on Small Business Delta Debit Card

1. The Delta SkyMiles Business Debit Card earns a maximum of 2,000 miles for each 30-day period.
2. The New Account Bonus, additional miles bonus for a Direct Delta Purchase, and/or certain promotional miles offers are excluded from the monthly cap.

BUT WAIT! 1 Mile Per Dollar?

Hopefully, by now it is clear that Truist Delta debit earns at a rate of 0.5 miles/dollar. However, certain clients can earn 1 mile/dollar spent on this debit card.

Wealth and Truist Asset Management Checking account clients (again, this requires 1 million in assets) will earn $1 mile/dollar for PIN Point of Sale and signature-based qualifying purchases. Another group of consumers who share the same benefit is existing Signature Advantage Checking account holders. Signature Advantage Checking account is a legacy product from SunTrust Bank and it comes with various other benefits, such as up to 50% Loyalty bonus on points/cashback/miles redeemed from select Truist credit cards.

Qualifying Purchase

1. Only PIN Point of Sale and signature-based purchases (including small dollar purchases that do not
   require a signature), internet purchases, phone or mail order purchases or automatic bill payments using the Truist Debit Card number and expiration date qualify for mileage earnings.
2. Cash advances, cash portions of an PIN POS sale with cash back, ATM transactions, tax payments, payments for stored-value cards, wire transfers, money transfers, money orders, cashier checks, quasi cash, traveler’s cheques or purchases of monetary instruments do not qualify for mileage earnings.

I have no idea how much of this is enforced.

Closing Thoughts

If you are curious why I am linking to documents, it is because Truist makes it hard to find the details, which has possibly been a contributing factor to several articles about Delta debit cards having incorrect information. It is also possible that I have stated some things incorrectly so you are welcome to click on those links and verify. Much of this article is based on this Terms and Condition document.

Anyway, do I think Delta debit cards from Truist are worth it? Well, it depends. Suppose you have a grandfathered Signature Advantage Checking account and are optimizing 4,000 miles per month, at the end of the year, after roughly $48k spent, you will have 48,000 miles. Meanwhile, depending on the worth of assets you have with Truist, you may pay as low as $25 in annual fee. Is this tradeoff acceptable to you?

But if you have a regular account, you will be hit with a $95 fee and you will need to spend $8,000 per month to get 4,000 miles/month to net 48,000 miles/year at a cost of spending $96k annually. Let’s not even talk about the business version as the fee is higher and the monthly cap is lower.