Sharing merchant rules across a household

It is Saturday morning. One of you is at the supermarket and the other is at a gas station across town. You both have the same four cards on your phones. One of you taps the 6% grocery card at the pump because it was the last card used. The other taps the flat 2% card at the supermarket because it is the default. Neither choice is a disaster. Both leave money on the counter.

Households almost always share cards and almost never share a system for using them. Each person builds their own habits, and over time the habits drift apart. The result is two people guessing separately with the same set of cards.

The fix is not a longer group text. It is one set of merchant rules that everyone follows without having to think about it.

What a shared rule set looks like

With Pass Family, rules live at the household level. Write a rule once and it applies to everyone on the plan, up to five people.

• The supermarket you all use goes to the 6% grocery card.
• All gas stations go to the 4% fuel card, whoever is driving.
• The online marketplace goes to the co-branded card that pays best there.
• Everything else goes to the flat 2% card.

Everyone gets the same recommendation at the same store. Nobody has to remember which card belongs where, and nobody has to ask.

Caps arrive faster with two people

Shared rules have a side effect worth knowing about. When two people send groceries to the same 6% card, its annual cap arrives about twice as fast. A cap that would have lasted one person until fall can be used up by early summer.

Cash Pass tracks the cap across the whole household, not per person. When the shared grocery card gets close to its limit, everyone sees the same warning. When it runs out, everyone is switched to the same backup card at the same time.

Setting it up

1. Choose Pass Family and invite the people who share your cards.
2. Agree on four or five rules for the places you all shop.
3. Add them once. They apply to every person on the plan.
4. Check the household view each month to see what the rules earned together and person by person.

Two people, one rule set, and nobody guessing at the register.

The household view in the ledger shows earnings for the whole family and a breakdown for each person, with annual fees subtracted. It is the easiest way to see whether the rules you agreed on are working, and where one person's habits still differ from the plan.

Shared rules only decide which card the recommendation names. Everyone still taps their own card at the register, and Cash Pass never moves money between anyone's accounts.

Questions about Pass Family

One wallet, one plan

Shared cards work best with shared rules. Agree on a handful of them, keep them in one place, and let everyone in the household get the same answer at the register.