Discover It Miles offers 3X on all spending! Worth getting?

Via Doctor of Credit I learned about the latest and greatest offering from Discover: the new Discover It Miles card. It’s essentially a 1.5% card, except Discover is currently offering double points (I’m not going to call them miles) your first year. That makes this a 3% card, and that is most definitely worth a look. All this with no annual fee and a $30 in-flight wifi credit!

Doc and Milenomics had a discussion about this card on Twitter. Milenomics is of the opinion that you’re better off sticking with the regular Discover It and maxing out the bonus categories. Doc says this in his review:

Personally this is my plan:

• Sign up for new Discover it Miles card. I’ll put all my non bonus category spend on this card for the first year.
• I’ll then try to downgrade it to another Discover it card, that way I’ll have two cards that can earn 5% in rotating categories. Doing product changes with Discover has not been an issue in the past.

I think I am an exception to the rule though. Most people would be better off not signing up for this card. How much do you really spend in non bonus categories? Keep in mind you’re often meeting minimum spend requirements and the like.

I think this deal would be great for a lot of people if they’re willing to wait for the bonus points (you don’t get them until you’ve had the card for a year). Keep in mind there are plenty of people who don’t max out their bonus categories for various reasons. There are some who don’t have many (or maybe even any) good MS options in bonus categories (which reminds me, I need to put up a “MS is dead!” post). And there are some people–you may want to sit down for this–who don’t know anything about credit cards and who do not want to swap various cards in and out of their wallet.

All of those folks could benefit from a card like this. I think 3X on everything is a great deal from a consumer standpoint, which is why we don’t see it too often. I hope this is enormously popular for Discover and it eats into the competitors’ business, prompting them to come back with good offers of their own. Will I get this offer? No, but only because I currently have two other cards which are about as good. As always, YMMV.