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Chase recently slashed the spending requirements to earn a welcome bonus on the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, yet you'll still earn the same 100,000 bonus points after you spend $8,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
We consider the Ink Preferred one of the best business cards to hold long-term, thanks to generous bonus categories that help you amass points easily, a modest annual fee, and high-value benefits like cell phone insurance and primary car rental coverage.
- Earn 100k bonus points after you spend $8,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $1,000 cash back or $1,250 toward travel when redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards®
- Earn 3 points per $1 on the first $150,000 spent on travel and select business categories each account anniversary year. Earn 1 point per $1 on all other purchases
- Round-the-clock monitoring for unusual credit card purchases
- With Zero Liability you won't be held responsible for unauthorized charges made with your card or account information.
- Redeem points for cash back, gift cards, travel and more - your points don't expire as long as your account is open
- Points are worth 25% more when you redeem for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards®
- Purchase Protection covers your new purchases for 120 days against damage or theft up to $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per account.
- Member FDIC
- 3X points per $1 on the first $150,000 spent in combined purchases on travel, shipping purchases, Internet, cable and phone services, advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines each account anniversary year
- 1X point per $1 on all other purchases
In this post, we’re going to highlight the value of the 100,000-point signup bonus and list some of the best redemption options to help you evaluate the offer. We cover the card benefits in greater detail in our comprehensive review of the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card. Today, we're going to focus on the newly improved welcome bonus, offering the same number of points while spending less money to make it happen. Here's a closer look.
Ink Preferred Signup Bonus: 100,000 Bonus Points
The current welcome offer on the Ink Preferred is 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points after you spend $8,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. This is not a tiered offer; it's all or nothing. You’ll need to complete the entire spending requirement to receive the 100,000 bonus points.
If you can hit the minimum spending requirement, this card delivers more value than just about any other business card on the market.
Baseline Value From Booking Travel
Chase makes it effortless to get a guaranteed return from Ultimate Rewards points — even if you know nothing about points and miles. The Chase Travel Portal is powered by Expedia, so redeeming points can be as easy as booking a flight, hotel, or rental car with an online travel agency. Here's how the current bonus breaks down if you use this no-hassle approach to booking:
Minimum value of $1,350 — If the Ink Preferred is the only Ultimate Rewards card you hold, you can redeem points at 1.25¢ apiece via the Chase Travel Portal. This guarantees you a return of $1,350 from the 108,000 points you take home after meeting the minimum spend (assuming you earn just one point per dollar spent to unlock the bonus).
Enhanced value of $1,620 — If you also hold the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, your Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1.50¢ per point in the travel portal, meaning 108,000 points could be redeemed for $1,620 worth of travel on the Chase Portal.
For more details, read more about the Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal.
Get More Value with Transfer Partners
While there’s nothing wrong with utilizing the Chase Travel Portal, your Ink Preferred welcome bonus can deliver far more savings if you transfer your points to one of the 14 Ultimate Rewards partners. When using these travel partners, AwardWallet users tend to redeem Chase points at 1.97¢ apiece.
Here are three examples where your points go much further by transferring them rather than buying travel through the Chase portal.
Park Hyatt Tokyo for 25–35k points per night
Transferring Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt is a great way to leverage your points for a luxury experience you wouldn't normally pay for. Rooms at the Park Hyatt Tokyo regularly cost $1,300. And that's for a non-refundable advance purchase rate.
If you would book this property in the Chase travel portal, you'd need the following:
- 105,760 points if redeeming points at 1.25¢ apiece
- 88,134 points if redeeming points at 1.5¢ apiece
However, you can book this property for 25,000–35,000 points per night (depending on Hyatt's peak/off-peak pricing) by transferring your points from Chase to Hyatt. That means you could book directly with Hyatt and get two or three nights for the price of one night using your points in the Chase Travel Portal!
Fly Delta One business class to Europe for 50K Virgin Atlantic miles (or less)
Transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic and fly to Europe (but not the U.K.) for 50,000 miles — or even fewer — in business class. You can use this with partners like Air France, Delta, and KLM since they're all in the SkyTeam alliance with Virgin Atlantic. Consider this Air France business-class booking from Detroit (DTW) to Paris (CDG) that costs 48,000 Virgin Points + $283.20 in taxes and fees.
To book this ticket, you could transfer 49,000 Chase points to Virgin Atlantic. That's much better than paying with points in the travel portal since the ticket costs $3,512.
In the portal, you'd need to pay 280,960 points when redeeming at 1.25¢ apiece. That price only drops to 234,134 points if you can redeem at 1.5¢ apiece.
Fly United Polaris business class to Brazil for 80K miles
One of the primary benefits of redeeming United miles for business-class flights is paying minimal fees. Although United’s award pricing is higher than some of its competitors, you keep more cash in your pocket. Ultimate Rewards transfer to United MileagePlus at 1:1, so you'll transfer 80k points to United to book this business-class flight from Houston (IAH) to São Paulo (GRU).
United is currently charging $8,549 for this flight. Ouch.
You'd need a whopping 683,920 points (at 1.25¢ each) or 569,934 points (at 1.5¢ each) to pay for this flight with points in the Chase travel portal. Transferring points to United and booking that way shaves an entire digit off the price.
Other Key Benefits
Outside of the signup bonus, there are plenty of reasons to add the Ink Preferred to your wallet:
Top return on business expenses
This is one of the top small business cards for earning points in categories that people care about. You can earn 3x points on up to $150k in yearly spending (based on your account anniversary) in the following bonus categories:
- shipping
- advertising with social media and search engines
- internet, cable, and phone services
- travel.
That means you can earn up to 450,000 bonus points per year if you max out the bonus categories. After the $150k threshold, you'll earn 1x on these purchases. You'll also earn one point per dollar on purchases in other categories.
Pool points from no-annual-fee cards
Chase issues four no-annual-fee cards that earn a type of Ultimate Rewards points that can't be transferred to travel partners. The points are only worth 1¢ each as cashback or in the travel portal. However, you can combine points earned on these cards with points earned on the Ink Preferred to redeem at a higher value in the travel portal or transfer to partners.
Chase Application Rules
Chase cards are subject to the Chase 5/24 rule. If you’ve opened five or more personal credit cards in the previous 24 months, you will not get approved for this card.
If you're strategizing your application strategy, keep in mind that — as a business card — the Ink Preferred won’t count towards your 5/24 status. This is advantageous if you want to apply for other Chase cards in the future.
Even better, it offers the highest-value signup bonus of any Ultimate Rewards-earning card.
Related: Understanding Rewards Credit Card Application Rules and Restrictions
Our Take
The Ink Preferred was already our top small-business card recommendation, thanks to its modest $95 annual fee, excellent earning rates on common business purchases, and solid purchase and travel insurance. With the current 100,000-point bonus, this card is a clear winner for anyone who can meet the spending requirements — especially now that the spending requirement was almost halved from the standard offer.
Earning a lot of points is great, but the redemption options are what really make the Ink Preferred stand out. If you’re just getting started with points and miles, this card makes it easy to redeem points at a fixed value. If you have more experience or are willing to learn the basics, you can do much better than the minimum value by transferring to one of the Ultimate Rewards partners.
While the current offer is great news for most, the spending requirement may put this bonus out of reach for smaller companies. If that's you or if you don't want to pay an annual fee, consult other cards in the Chase Ink Business card family.
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
If I’m an authorized user on this card on someone elses account, can I apply for my own and still get the bonus? Do I need to remove myself as an authorized user from the other card?
Hi Vinny, being a cardholder (employee card in this case) on someone else’s account doesn’t impact your ability to qualify for this bonus. It shouldn’t matter that you’re a cardholder, and that won’t show up on your personal credit report. You should be fine. If there’s an issue, it’s easily rectified with a phone call.
When does this offer end?
Chris, as far as we know, this is the “new normal” for the spending requirement, not a temporary offer.
Is this still subject to 5/24 rule? There has been talks about people approved even though they didn’t meet 5/24. Thanks
Tien, as far as we know, it is subject to 5/24. Those getting approved while over 5/24 tend to be exceptions.
Spend $15K in 3 months???!!! Seems like Chase is out of touch with the current realities of spending that kind of money right now.
its a business card, 15k for a business over 3 months is not that much!
Wow, that’s the best Ink card offer I have seen! Thanks for the info!
I’d wait for better offers after covid-19 cools down
100K is great but spend requirement is high.
Very nice sign up incentive, however the categories to earn 3 points are limited in my opinion, Many other business cards offer 1.5 or 2 points for all purchases. Would be much more attractive if they included additional categories for 3 points such as dinning.
It would be good to know the validity of this offer, 15K is too much money for spending in three months, probably this offer will be extended
Spend is a bit too high especially at this time.
This is an amazing offer. But under the situation right now it will be difficult to spend $15k. I have a small business and $15K spend requirement is too steep!
I agree with some of the earlier comments that the minimum spend could be a little high. I’ll also agree that it would seem when this health crisis is over, there could be some good offers out there!
One of the best cards out there. I use it for all my business expenses.
100k is amazing but I can’t meet that spend. 🙁
That $15k spend requirement is seriously high. I really liked the Ink card in the past though.
Unfortunately, the spend requirement will only get higher.
What are they chances they roll something similar out to the regular consumer cards to try and drive business to the airlines?
Nice sign up bonus…but the $15K spending requirement is too steep IMHO.
Not a good return.
Do you know how long this offer will be available ? Because now we cant travel for a couple of months due to coronavirus…
Regards !
Indeed, they should make special accommodation in light the global health crisis.
Will the referral link for the 80k for 5k be going away as well?
We’re not sure. If you know someone who wants the lower spend, I wouldn’t wait if your referral link is still showing 80K for 5K.
I can see they are trying to keep up business. Since they came out with the new United card and now this bonus. Good deals still. I would think that banks wouldn’t have to worry too much since people will probably be buying online? But maybe not as much as before. I know that I’m getting lots of online deals in my inbox. Makes me curious to see what will be coming out later.
The 3x categories having a ceiling of $150K in combined purchases each year (or 450,000 UR points) is a huge draw in my opinion. I have the Ink Cash and its cap is significantly lower. I wonder if I can upgrade if I’m well over 5/24. Then again, it’s probably worth waiting for a time when I can get a signup bonus. Hmmm…
That is amazing! Wish I could spend $15k organically. Not sure how to do it in this environment right now. Scary.
These enhanced offers will always make existing cardholders kick themselves.
This would be a tough time to count of $15k spend, when a good bit of my spend is typically from air/hotel …
Pretty large, but standard, minimal spend. For that offer, it’s probably worth it.
that’s a BIG $ spend requirement. Ouch.
Is it ok to apply for this for a new small business if I already have one for another business? Received my first one June 2018. Also have Ink Cash, October 2018, and Ink Unlimited, March 2019. Also have CSR and Hyatt, both in 2018. Am 1/24 with credit score around 830.
This site used to — and maybe still does? — have articles on how to properly apply for these cards. A walkthrough of sorts. Could you please link to that resource?
The last time I filled out an application for something like this, I learned only later that I had misunderstood one of the questions on the application, and that certain reasonable-seeming answers usually cause applications to be denied.)
Thank you for sharing your experience! Can you tell us which question was that? I will be more careful with my own application from now on.
Award Wallet can’t offer that sort of guidance because of the banking relationships, but in general, you may want to check Flyertalk or Reddit r/churning for tips.
How long should someone hold out for a even bigger bonus in the near future?
Do you know when this offer expires? I am unable to travel for awhile due to Covid-19, and could stretch to cover the $15k/3 months once travel restrictions start to ease.
I just reviewed the offer’s details and terms, and there’s no mention of an exact expiration date. I suspect they usually don’t share that info, unfortunately.
Although, perhaps the AW folks would know the average length of such an offer?
We always share the end date as soon as we are made aware of them. The average length of a higher than normal offer in 2019 was 63 days.
Wow. 100k UR is a great offer. Have we seen an offer this big for an UR-earning card since the launch of the CSR? In any event, $15k spend hurdle will be a little prohibitive for some, but with a little though and planning, should still be doable for many folks.
Pretty beefy minimum spend. Given the current travel situation, I think I’ll wait for the more lucrative offers that will surely be coming soon.