Manufactured Spending - Best way to redeem Discover cashback - Hello..! I have been using my discover card from quiet some time now and i have collected bunch of cashback points on this one. I see two benefits of redeeming these in near future that will benefit me the most: 1st Redeeming on ... More on flyertalk.com

I don't personally have a Discover card so can't comment specifically, but redeeming for cash in hopes of gaining interest on it sounds like a poor strategy. I'd save up the points and use it to buy gift cards for stores you would shop at anyway. More on ficoforums.myfico.com

My understanding is that credit card rewards aren't taxable. They're treated as a rebate or discount, not as interest or any other form of income. So having it all deposited to your bank account would probably be fine. If you want to get more than $600 of value, redeem for gift cards, as the other commenters have said. The face value of these gift cards is always higher than the amount of cashback you pay for them. You might have a small amount left over, since the gift cards come in certain increments. If you're happy with the $600 amount (or don't like any of the gift card options) and really don't want it deposited to your bank account, you can redeem for statement credit instead. If you shop on Amazon using your Discover, their "pay with points" feature can redeem cashback at 1:1 value as well. More on reddit.com

Assuming this is before your first year, every statement balance you get is avaliable for cashback depending on the purchase. This month is 5% for gas and mobile wallets (as well as 1% for everything else). That being said, every statement cycle you should receive your cashback for that month. In the "rewards section" the total amount of cashback you have to redeem will be at the top. If you press the redeem button you will have a multitude of different options that you can choose from. Pressing the cash button let's you either use it for your statement or other stuff. If you want to use your 11$ for your statement you can either press the "apply to your bill as one..." OR you you can either go directly to the payments page and when your choosing ur payment amount/method, you will see "apply your cashback bonus" in which you can then choose how much you want to spend on your current statement, etc Edit: also after a full year of using discover they will then send you all the cashback you made that year (regardless of spent or not) so you can use for your statement or cashing it out More on reddit.com