Plasma One is running 20% travel cashback until September 16

Plasma is offering 20% back on eligible travel paid with Plasma One between September 3 and September 16. The categories named are flights, hotels and cruises. Cashback appears as pending in the app immediately after payment and is paid 30 days after settlement.

Two details in that description do more work than the headline rate.

Eligibility is per account, not universal

Plasma tells users to update the app to see whether they qualify. That wording matters: this is not a rate that applies to every Plasma One holder who books a flight this fortnight. Anyone reading a 20% figure and planning a booking around it should confirm the offer is actually showing in their own app before treating it as a discount they have earned.

Settlement is what the clock runs on, and travel is where settlement drifts

The payout rule is 30 days after settlement, not 30 days after booking. For most card spending those are effectively the same day. Travel is the category where they routinely are not.

Airlines usually capture the charge at booking. Hotels frequently authorize the card at reservation and settle at checkout, which for a September reservation can mean settlement weeks or months later. Cruise deposits behave differently again. Plasma has not published whether the offer keys off the transaction date or the settlement date, so a booking made close to September 16 is exactly the case worth checking in the app rather than assuming.

The same gap decides what a cancellation does. A refunded booking that settles and then reverses is the ordinary way merchant cashback disappears after it has already shown as pending, which is worth keeping in mind for a promotion sitting on top of trips that have not happened yet.

The missing number is the cap

No cap has been published. A 20% rate on travel is unusual enough that the ceiling, not the percentage, is likely to determine what the offer is actually worth, and no figure has been published to work from. Nor is there a definition of which merchants count as eligible within those categories — an online travel agency, an airline's own site and a hotel booked through a marketplace can all settle under different descriptors.

For how those conditions usually behave on this card, see Plasma One merchant cashback rules and limits. Current tracked values are on the Plasma One Card page, and the promotion runs to September 16.