[Now With Increased Cell Phone Protection] Highest Public Offer Ever: Chase Ink Preferred Now Offering A 100,000 Ultimate Rewards Point Signup Bonus!

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Update: This card now offers $1,000 in cell phone protection per claim on up to 3 claims per year with a $100 deductible. That’s up from $600 in protection with a $100 deducitble.

Chase Ink Preferred Card

Signup bonus:

The Chase Ink Preferred Card is now offering a whopping signup bonus of 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points for opening the card and spending $15,000 in 3 months. Those points are worth a minimum of $1,000 cash back or $1,250 towards paid travel, but they can be worth much more as shown below.

No other card offers that many Chase Ultimate Rewards points for signing up. The next closest is Chase Sapphire Preferred at 60,000 points.

Annual fee: 

There is a $95 annual fee for the primary card and no annual fee for additional cardholders.

Signup bonus terms: 

• You might not be approved for this card if you have received a signup bonus on an Ink Preferred card for the same business within the past 24 months, but you can get approved and if you are approved you will get the signup bonus.
• You can get approved and get the signup bonus for this card for multiple businesses.
• You can get approved and get the signup bonus for this card even if you have other Chase Ink cards.

Business card and 5/24 info:

This is a business card, but you may already have a business that needs a card to keep track of expenses. For example if your name is Joe Smith and you sell items online, or if you have any other side business and want a credit card to better keep track of business expenditures you can open a business credit card for “Joe Smith” as the business. You don’t need to file any messy government paperwork to be allowed to do that. Just be sure to select “Sole Proprietorship” as the business type and just use your social security number in the Tax Identification Number field.

If you have business paperwork you can apply under your business name. Otherwise, it’s critical to just write your own name as the business name if you are just applying for your own small business as a Sole Proprietorship that doesn’t have any business paperwork. You can then send in bills in your own name for verification.

If you’re like me and you run more than one business, you can signup for multiple of the same card for each business to manage each businesses expenses separately.

All Chase cards appear to be subject to 5/24 restrictions, meaning that you are not likely to be approved if you have been approved for 5 or more consumer credit cards in the past 24 months. Note that the Chase system automatically counts cards like authorized user cards and store cards as cards that count towards 5/24, but if you explain to Chase that those cards are merely authorized user cards or store cards they can manually approve you for a new card. You can check your credit report for free at the federally authorized annualcreditreport.com to check how many accounts are shows as being open in the past 24 months.

However, it’s important to note that business cards from most banks, including Chase business cards, do not get added to your 5/24 count of recently opened cards. That’s because business cards from most banks don’t show up on your personal credit report and the 5/24 count is based off of your personal credit report. That means that applying for these cards won’t “hurt” your 5/24 count.

Another benefit of the card not reporting on your personal credit report is that when you spend money on personal cards your credit score will be hurt even if you pay your bill on time. A whopping 30% of your credit score is based on credit utilization. You can pay off your card bill before your statement is generated to avoid that, but that takes effort and laying out money well before you have to. Additionally it’s good to have the statement close with a couple dollars to show the card is active and being paid every month. On an business cards from banks like AMEX and Chase it’s just not reported, so you can wait until the money is due without it having a negative effect on your score. That also means if you close the card, it won’t have an effect on your credit score.

Card earnings: 

• 3 points per dollar on travel, including airfare, hotels, car rentals, cruises, subways, trains, taxis, tolls, parking, Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, etc.
• 3 points per dollar on internet, cable, and phone services. This includes streaming service like Netflix and more.
• 3 points per dollar on shipping purchases.
• 3 points per dollar on search engine and social media advertising.
• Max of $150,000 of annual spending in bonus categories.
• 1 point per dollar elsewhere.
• There are no foreign transaction fees.

Spend Threshold:

You’ll need to spend $15,000 on this card within 3 months.

You can pay your federal taxes for a 1.87% fee. If you overpay your taxes you can request a refund or apply it to your next year’s taxes.

My local natural gas company allows me to prepay up to $1,000 on a credit card for a $1.65 flat fee. That’s a great way to earn miles and help meet a spend threshold. My electricity supplier allows me to pay with a credit card for free as long as I am enrolled in autopay.

See this post for more ideas on meeting a credit card spend threshold.

Cell Phone Protection:

If you pay your cell phone bill on the card you cell phone will be insured from damage, theft, or involuntary and accidental parting until the end of the calendar month following the payment.

This benefit covers claims up to $600 and there is a $100 deductible for claims. You do not need to pay for the phone on this card to file a claim.

You can file up to 3 claims per 12 month period.

This card offers triple points for cell phone bills, making it a good value for your monthly bill thanks to the insurance.

Other card benefits:

• Primary rental car CDW insurance in every country, when the rental is for business purposes.
• Primary rental car CDW insurance in every country outside of the US, when the rental is for personal purposes. Rentals without a business purpose in the US have secondary coverage.
• Extended warranty adds a year of coverage, up to $10,000 per claim.
• Purchase protection for items damaged or stolen within 120 days, up to $10,000 per claim.
• Trip Delay Reimbursement covers $500 per person for reasonable expenses (Hotel, food, toiletries, medicine, etc) required for delays more than 12 hours.
• Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance covers $5,000 per trip or $10,000 per trip with multiple travelers.
• Travel Accident Insurance covers $500,000 per person.
• Lost Luggage Insurance covers $3,000 per person per trip (limit of $500 per person for jewelry, watches, electronics)
• Baggage Delay Reimbursement covers $100 per day per person (max of 5 days) for essential items needed (Clothing, toiletries, charger, etc) for delays more than 6 hours.

Increased points value:

If you or someone in your household has an Ink Preferred card you can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points earned from any card at a value of 1.25 cents towards paid travel.

If you or someone in your household has a Sapphire Reserve you can get a value of 1.5 cents per point towards paid travel. That makes the signup bonus worth at least $1,500 towards travel.

Pay yourself back

You can currently use Ultimate Rewards points to offset the following charges at a value of 1.25 cents per point:

• Shipping
• Internet
• Cable and phone services
• Charitable donations to select charities
• Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines

Pay Yourself Back is now a permanent feature of the Ultimate Rewards program, though categories rotate. This adds a ton of value to the Ultimate Rewards program as you can buy anything from those stores, even gift cards to other stores, and make them free by redeeming points at a value of 1.25 or 1.5 cents each. The ability to get that kind of value from your points even when you’re not traveling is outstanding.

A great feature of the program is that you keep the original points that the purchase earned, even though you paid yourself back for the purchase. That means your points will be worth more than 1.25 or 1.5 cents each!

Airline and hotel points transferability:

If you or someone in your household has an Ink Preferred card you can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points into valuable airline and hotel mileage currencies.

Product changes options:

You can call Chase to convert between an Ink Preferred card to either of the following cards:

• Chase Ink Cash Card ($0 annual fee)
• Chase Ink Unlimited Card ($0 annual fee)

Note that some reps will only allow card conversions after you have had the card for 12 months.

Those cards also have strong benefits.

The Ink Cash Card earns 50K points for spending $3,000, 5 points per dollar on $25K in annual cable, internet, phone, and office supply purchases, plus 2 points per dollar on $25K in annual dining and gas purchases.

The Ink Unlimited Card earns earns 50K points for spending $3,000, plus 1.5 points per dollar everywhere.

However those no annual fee cards cant transfer points into airline miles or hotel points without a Chase Ultimate Rewards card that has an annual fee. Plus they don’t get a bonus for travel redemptions.

As the no annual fee cards have a smaller signup bonus, it can make sense to signup for Ink Preferred and then make a product change to one of the no annual fee cards down the line.  If you later decide you want to take advantage of the benefits of the Ink Preferred card you can convert it back to that again.

Visa Savings Edge:

All Chase Ink cards are eligible for additional cash back via Visa Savings Edge.

That means you can earn points plus cash back at ParkWhiz, Budget, Chevron, AutoZone, Boost Mobile, MGM hotels, Wyndham hotels, and more.

Killer Combos:

Stacking multiple Ultimate Rewards cards together can supercharge your earnings by getting you more points per dollar while increasing the value of all your points.

Read more about this strategy in depth in this post.

This list will be customized for the Ink Preferred.

A Chase Bifecta would consist of a household that has the Ink Preferred and the Ink Unlimited or Freedom Unlimited. The total effective annual fees would be either $95. With the Ink Preferred you would earn 3 points per dollar on travel, internet, cable, phone, shipping, and more. With an Unlimited card you would earn 1.5 points per dollar everywhere. Either way you’ll be able to transfer all of your points into airline miles or hotel points, but with the Ink Preferred you can also use the points with a value of 1.25 cents each towards travel.

A Chase Trifecta adds a no annual fee card like Ink Cash or Chase Freedom into the mix, so your total effective annual fee will still be just $95. Both of those cards give options to earn a whopping 5 points per dollar in various categories on top of the 3 points per dollar that the Ink Preferred offers and the 1.5 points per dollar everywhere else with an Ink Unlimited or Freedom Unlimited card.

Having all 3 Chase Ink cards means you can take advantage of bonus points on all purchases that you make while not having any effect on your personal credit.

A Chase Quadfecta would add both the Ink Cash and Chase Freedom on top of a Ink Preferred card and an Unlimited card, so your total effective annual fee will still be just $95.

A Chase Quinfecta would add either the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve to that mix, adding $95 or $250 to the additional effective annual fee after the Sapphire Reserve travel credit. This will add either double or triple points on dining, plus with Sapphire Reserve would make your points worth at least 1.5 cents each.

Again, all of these cards don’t need to be in one person’s name. 2 people from the same household can split up the requisite cards that make up the Quinfecta, as they can transfer the Ultimate Rewards points back and forth between themselves freely and they can add each other as an authorized user on their cards!

Airline transfer partners:

You can transfer points at a 1:1 ratio to:

• United (Star Alliance)
• Air Canada Aeroplan (Star Alliance)
• Singapore (Star Alliance)
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue (Skyteam)
• British Airways (OneWorld)
• Aer Lingus (OneWorld)
• Iberia (OneWorld)
• Emirates
• JetBlue
• Southwest
• Virgin Atlantic

Hotel transfer partners:

You can transfer points at a 1:1 ratio to:

• Hyatt
• IHG
• Marriott

The great thing about Chase Ultimate Rewards is how versatile and valuable they are:

The Ink Preferred and Sapphire Preferred cards allow you and anyone in your household to transfer Chase points into miles. They also allow you to use points at a value of 1.25 cents each towards travel.

The Sapphire Reserve also allows you and anyone in your household to transfer Chase points into miles. Plus it allows you to use points at a value of 1.5 cents each towards travel.

The fixed value is excellent and doesn’t require hunting down award space, but those points can be much more valuable by transferring them into airline miles or hotel points.

• If I want to stay in a 5 star Park Hyatt in the Maldives, Melbourne, NYC, Paris, Sydney, or Tokyo that would cost over $1,000/night, I can instantly transfer 25-30K points to Hyatt to do that, a value of up to 6 cents per point.
• If I need a one-way flight from Cleveland (or Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Montreal, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Toronto, etc) to NYC that can cost $500 each way, I can instantly transfer 7.5K points to British Airways to book a short-haul on American with no last minute booking fees. Or if American doesn’t have availability I can instantly transfer 10K points to United for their short-haul award. That’s a value of up to 7 cents per point.
• If I want to stay in a non-chain hotel that costs $300/night and don’t want to pay cash, I can redeem 20K points for the room thanks to my Sapphire Reserve card’s minimum redemption value of 1.5 cents per point or 24K points with the Ink Preferred card’s minimum redemption value of 1.25 cents per point
• If I want to fly in a $25,000 ANA First Class Suite round-trip from the US to Tokyo, I can instantly transfer 110K or 120K points to Virgin Atlantic. That’s a value of up to 23 cents per point.
• If I want to book a $2,281 business class ticket on Air Canada to Tel Aviv I can redeem 152K points for the flight thanks to my Sapphire Reserve card’s minimum redemption value of 1.5 cents per point or 182K points with the Sapphire Preferred card’s minimum redemption value of 1.25 cents per point, plus I’ll earn miles for more future travel as it’s considered a paid flight instead of an award flight.
• And thousands of other possibilities from Singapore couples suites to booking Southwest awards with 2 free bags and free cancellations, to stealing 2nd base in middle of an MLB game.

Will you signup for the Chase Ink Preferred card?