Big‑Bank Credit Card Rules: November 2025 Snapshot and 2026 Outlook

Updated as of November 28, 2025. This is a practical look at how the major issuers are handling approvals and welcome bonuses right now, and what that means for your plans going into 2026.

Key takeaways

• Most big issuers now limit welcome bonuses to **once per card** or **once every 24–48 months**.
• American Express and Chase run **bonus‑eligibility checks** and will warn you when you will not receive a welcome offer.
• Citi, Capital One and Bank of America enforce **clear timing rules** on how often you can apply.
• Barclays, Wells Fargo and Discover do not publish many hard caps, but they are **very sensitive to clusters of new accounts and inquiries**.
• Your **last six to twelve months of applications** can quietly override the written rules at almost every bank.

American Express: lifetime bonuses and spacing

American Express still uses “once per lifetime” language on most cards. The terms say you may not be eligible for a welcome offer if you have or have had that card before.

Amex backs that up with a **bonus pop‑up** during the application. If Amex believes you are not eligible, you will see a message before anything is final. You can cancel without a hard pull or continue knowing there will be no bonus.

On the approval side, Amex generally follows two internal limits:

• Around **one new credit card every 5 days**, and
• No more than **two new credit cards in about 90 days**.

Most people also run into a soft cap of **about five Amex credit cards** at once, across personal and business. Charge and hybrid cards sit outside that cap.

Citi: 48‑month windows and 8/65 timing

Citi now leans on two rules that are already live in November 2025:

• A **48‑month bonus clock** on many ThankYou and AAdvantage cards. If you have earned a bonus on a specific card in the last four years, Citi’s terms say you are not eligible for a new‑account bonus on that product.
• The **8/65 rule**: at most one Citi approval every eight days and two approvals in any 65‑day period, with a slower clock for business cards.

Citi is also reasonably inquiry‑sensitive. A year with many new accounts and hard pulls can produce denials even when you are outside the 48‑month window.

Capital One: one card every six months

Capital One keeps its rules simple and strict. As of late 2025, most people will only be approved for **one new Capital One card every six months**, across personal and small‑business cards.

On the welcome‑offer side, flagship travel cards such as Venture and Venture X now use **48‑month language**, so you are not eligible for a new bonus on that product if you received a bonus within the last four years.

Capital One is also known for pulling all three credit bureaus and being tough on applicants with many recent accounts. Several new cards in the last six to twelve months is a common reason for denials, even when your score looks excellent.

Bank of America: 2/3/4 and overall new‑account caps

Bank of America adds two layers to its approvals:

• The **2/3/4 rule**: at most two new BoA cards in 2 months, three in 12 months and four in 24 months.
• A soft cap on how many cards you have opened overall. Customers without a BoA deposit relationship often struggle if they have opened three or more cards in the last 12 months, while Preferred Rewards customers can sometimes go as high as seven new cards in a year across all issuers.

BoA allows repeat bonuses on many products after a waiting period (commonly around 24 months), but the exact timing is card‑specific. These patterns are already in place today and are likely to remain through 2026.

Barclays, Wells Fargo and Discover: strict on recent activity

These issuers publish fewer formal rules, but their behavior is very consistent in late 2025.

• **Barclays** is one of the most inquiry‑sensitive banks. Multiple recent hard pulls or many new accounts in the past year are common reasons for denial. On some cards, such as JetBlue products, Barclays also uses language that lets the bank deny a bonus if you currently have or previously had an account in the same program or if they think you are gaming the system.
• **Wells Fargo** card terms often say you may not qualify for a new Wells Fargo consumer card if you opened one in the last six months. In practice, you should leave at least half a year between approvals and even more time if you have been applying aggressively with other banks.
• **Discover** generally allows no more than two Discover cards per person and only one new Discover card per year. Cashback Match applies only in the first year of each new account, so there is little incentive for frequent churn even if you could get more cards.

Why the last 6–12 months drive so many decisions

Across all of these issuers, your **recent behavior** is now almost as important as the published rules. New accounts and inquiries feed into both your external credit scores and the internal risk models banks run before they approve you or pay out a bonus.

You can be technically inside every rule and still see denials for “too many recent accounts” or “too many recent inquiries” if you have been on a streak of applications. That is true at Chase with 5/24, at Amex with lifetime pop‑ups, at Citi with 48‑month timers, and at banks like Capital One, Barclays, Wells Fargo and Discover that are increasingly cautious with frequent applicants.

As of November 2025, the safest way to stay in good standing heading into 2026 is to:

• Space out applications instead of doing them in bursts.
• Keep overall utilization low and let accounts age.
• Hold on to a core set of long‑term cards to anchor your average age of accounts.
• Treat the best welcome offers as **once‑per‑product shots** that you time carefully, not as deals you expect to recycle every year.

If you layer those habits on top of the issuer‑specific rules above, you will be in a much stronger position with Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bank of America, Barclays, Wells Fargo and Discover — not just today, but as we move into 2026.

Big‑bank credit card rules at a glance (late 2025)