U.S. Bank Altitude® Reserve

This card is worth a close look if mobile wallet payments cover a big share of your day-to-day spending. Earning 3x points on Apple Pay and Google Pay can turn a wide range of ordinary purchases into elevated rewards, which is the main reason to carry this card. If you regularly pay by phone at grocery stores, restaurants, drugstores, and general retail, the rewards rate can be much stronger in practice than many cards with narrower bonus categories.

The tradeoff is the $400 annual fee and the lack of listed ongoing benefits here to offset it. Without a welcome bonus or clear fee-reducing perks in the card data, this is a harder sell for someone who only occasionally uses a mobile wallet or wants premium travel benefits alongside the annual fee. For the right spender, the rewards structure does most of the work. For everyone else, a lower-fee or no-fee card will usually be easier to justify.