If you want a single no frills everyday card then the following provide 2% cash back everywhere with no annual fee:

Fidelity Visa, PayPal MasterCard, Citi DoubleCash.

PayPal MasterCard has no foreign transaction fee and the Fidelity Visa earns 1% overseas due to the 1% foreign transaction fee.

If you want to maximize cash back based on the categories you spend in most, then you have tons of options depending on your biggest spending categories. The only way the Apple card comes out ahead in this area is if most of your spending is at the Apple store/app store.

For an average-ish young person pairing any of the straight 2% cards mentioned above with the Uber Visa card is a great combo - Uber Visa is 4% cash back on dining and 3% cash back on travel, no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee.

It's worth mentioning that petty much all of BoA's offerings are extremely good if you have >$100,000 will Merrill Edge. IRAs count and you get a bunch of free trades.

Here's someone else's opinion: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/four-better-alternatives-to-t...

I've been churning credit cards for years, I currently have ~20 credit cards.

Thanks! I use Apple Pay most of the time. For some reason almost every place I shop accepts it, but for the places that don't--and aren't Amazon, for which I have their card--I'll try some of these others.

Doctor of Credit has some good advice on best credit card for the categories you spend most on: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/credit-cards/best-credit-card... It can sometimes go a bit out-of-date but its a great overview and (unlike the majority of blogs) they don't have credit card affiliate links[1], so they are unbiased.

[1] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/were-removing-all-credit-card...