Mesa Card Review
We have a new contender for our best credit cards list. The Mesa Homeowner’s card immediately stands out as the only card on the market right now offering points on mortgage payments. That alone is intriguing, but it offers the statement credits that are standard on premium cards like the Amex Gold, but without the premium fee–or any fee, in fact. Although the earning rates, protections, and rewards won’t blow anyone away, the basic value proposition of the Mesa card is outstanding. If you’re paying a mortgage each month, you should be tracking this card closely, even if you are waiting and hoping for Bilt to come through with points on mortgages.
Quick ratings
🥇 Great card
💸 Earner
🆓 No fee
🦥 Lazy
🛡️ Travel protections
🔒 Shopping protections
Pros:
$0 fee, net-negative with statement credits
Huge earning potential on points from mortgage payments
Above average protections
Cons:
Must spend $1,000 per month to get points on mortgage
Hard to hit spending minimum with bonus categories
Mediocre transfer partners
Bilt might be a better option soon
Bonus
None. (But you get points for mortgage payments each year.)
Net fee
Annual fee:
$0
Credits and offsets:
$120 at Lowe’s ($30 quarterly),
Also: Thumbtack ($200), Wag! pet care ($120), The Farmer’s Dog ($120), Armadillo home warranty ($100), Cozy Earth ($100), and Big Box memberships ($65).
Typical net annual fee:
-$120
Earning and points
3x on home & family expenses (like home improvement and utilities)
2x on groceries, gas, EV charging
1x on mortgage payments (minimum $1,000/mo in other purchases on card, up to 100k/year)
1x on other purchases
Points rating: ⭐ (1/5)
Simple redemption:
Redeem for travel via Mesa at 1¢ per point
Redeem for statement credit at 0.6¢ per point
Redemption bonus:
None
Transfer partners:
1:1 transfer: Air India, Finnair, Hainan Airlines, Thai Airways, Vietnam Airlines. 1.5:1 ratio: Accor Live Limitless (ALL).
None of these options are exciting, but with a floor of 1¢ per point, you’re still getting decent value. The airline partners are obscure enough that it’s doubtful that you’d get great value with them, but I’m sure as more Mesa users play around with them the data will improve.
For now, the clear strong point is ALL. Accor isn’t the biggest hotel chain in the world, but it has over 5,000 properties with good presence all over the world. ALL points have a straight cash value: 2,000 points will get you 40€ off your bill. That means you can’t snag a luxury hotel on the cheap, but you get guaranteed excellent value. Converted to US dollars, an ALL point is worth about 2.2¢, so even with the 1.5:1 transfer ratio, Mesa points are worth just under 1.5¢ each when redeemed with ALL.
To put that in context, if you spent $2,000 on your mortgage each month, you’d have 36,000+ Mesa points at the end of the year (because of the minimum spend requirement), equalling $360+ in travel via Mesa or about $525 in credit toward Accor hotel stays.
So although Mesa points lack the flexibility and high-end redemption opportunities of other points currencies, they present a very solid value floor for those who are able to use them at ALL properties.
Perks
None. Possibly the Visa Signature Concierge?
Protections
✅ No foreign transaction fees
✅ Trip Delay Insurance
✅ Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance
✅ Baggage Insurance
✅ Baggage Delay Insurance
✅ Rental Car Insurance
✅ Purchase Protection
🚫 Return Protection
✅ Extended Warranty
🚫 Cell Phone Insurance
✅ Travel Accident Insurance
I couldn’t find Mesa’s guide to benefits, but it’s a Visa Signature card, and you can read about those benefits here.
Hacks
None yet, but I bet they’re coming.
Laziness rating
🦥🦥? (2 of 5, maybe)
It’s a little tricky to assess how lazy-friendly this card is or will be. On the one hand, for those limiting themselves to just one or two cards, the Mesa card may be perfect. If it’s your primary card and you easily spend $1,000 per month on credit cards, you’ll easily collect a healthy collection of points, especially on mortgage payments. Having two relatively straightforward ways to redeem points (through Mesa for travel or via transfers to ALL) minimizes time spent optimizing rewards.
On the other hand, if you’re even slightly advanced, the Mesa card could be a pain. It only earns triple points on home expenses, which is likely to get you nowhere close to the $1,000 minimum spending to earn points on mortgage payments. So you’ll have to find spending elsewhere, likely diverting from other cards that earn more bonus points on more valuable points currencies. And you’ll need to pay close attention to your balance to make sure you hit that minimum. Meanwhile, if you want to take full advantage of Mesa’s transfer partners, you’ll be in a brave new world, as there’s not a ton of guidance floating around on how to maximize their unusual set of airline partners.
Alternatives
Bilt has teased points for mortgage payments, but it hasn’t launched that option yet, so for now, Mesa is the only game in town.
Partners
The Mesa card has solid earnings on home improvement and utilities and respectable earnings on gas and groceries. But it lacks high earnings on things like dining and travel. It also has a solid transfer in Accor hotels, but other options are limited and not terribly lucrative. The Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) offers 3x on dining and 2x on travel, while the Amex Gold offers 4x on dining and groceries and 3x on flights. Both cards also offer solid redemptions on flights. I prefer the Amex Gold if you can use enough of the credits to get to a net-$0 fee, but the CSP might be the better (if slightly more expensive) option for busy homeowners not inclined to wade through Amex’s morass of statement credits.
The Mesa card lacks higher-end features like lounge access, but you can get those basically for free with the Capital One Venture X.
Conclusion
The Mesa card debuts with a flourish, immediately presenting as one of the best-value cards on the market, especially in the no-fee space. That said, Bilt’s reward program is vastly superior at this point, so personally I would be inclined to give Bilt a little more time to see how they integrate mortgage rewards into the Bilt card before I would devote an application, hard credit pull, and wallet space to the Mesa card. But if you’re spending a lot of money at Lowe’s and Home Depot already, the Mesa card just might be the card for you.
🦥
Still renting? Check out the Bilt Mastercard and its homeownership transition options HERE.
Eat out a lot want more than double points? Take a look at the Amex Gold and its quadruple points on dining HERE.
Want to see some other top cards? Start HERE.