Chase seems determined to win our Bonvoyed of the Year award in December.
After relaunching the Sapphire Reserve card with a 45% increase in the annual fee, a plethora of coupon book benefits, removing 1.5c redemptions via Chase Travel℠, and a (fairly) lackluster welcome offer, advising people that they could get a Sapphire Reserve if they already have a Sapphire Preferred card and then promptly declining many people’s applications because they already have a Sapphire Preferred card, opening cards for people who said they didn’t want one, and stating that if you refer more than 10 people in a month you might not receive any referral bonus points whatsoever, they’re now making it harder to earn bonus points for referring new business cardholders.
When generating referral links from Chase Ink cards, there’s now a message stating the following:
Effective October 7th, 2025, you will be eligible to receive referral bonus awards for new Chase Business card customers only. Referrals of individuals with existing Chase business card accounts will no longer qualify for the referral bonus.
I’m not currently seeing that wording displayed on the original refer-a-friend landing page, but it is being displayed via this new method of generating referral links, so the original landing page will presumably be updated with those terms soon.
Interestingly, I’m only seeing that wording when referring from Chase Ink Business credit cards. When generating a referral link from my Marriott Premier Plus Business card (no longer available for new applications), I’m not seeing any terms restricting the ability to earn bonus points in the future. It also isn’t being listed when referring from personal cards at the moment.
Capital One has had this same policy for many years whereby they only award bonus points if the person or business you refer isn’t already a cardholder. It’s therefore sad to see Chase follow Capital One’s lead by making it harder to get rewarded for referring a business to a new card. Hopefully this doesn’t get expanded to other non-Ink business cards, nor to personal cards, but I’m concerned that this is Chase’s way of testing out this policy, with the intention to expand it further in the future.
What’s not stated is what happens when a business has had a Chase card in the past but has since closed it. If they’re referred for a new card, will the business referring them earn a bonus because they’re not currently a business cardholder, or will past card ownership still affect things? That’s something that I’m sure we’ll get data points on post October 7.
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I assume this will spread to Amex now that Chase is doing it.
Likely, though anecdotally PUP and public offers being higher than referral offers have limited my usability of AMEX referrals. The 5X or 10X spending offers for referrals are the big ticket items, otherwise public offers on MR cards always seem to be 25K to 50K higher than anything P2 has available to refer me with.
In the meantime, any news on whether there will be referral bonuses to the new Sapphire Reserve Biz card?
We have that on our list of posts to write – you can refer to the Sapphire Reserve for Business from Ink cards now.
Thanks. Just saw that on Doc, too.
There are some topics that are best not discussed in public forums. The banks and loyalty programs learn of their weaknesses and they shut down strategies. This is another example. I’m not suggesting this is FM’s fault. This strategy has been highlighted by many bloggers and bragged about by many readers.
Without useful information, posts will go unread
There is plenty of useful information that can be discussed in public forums that won’t compromise key strategies. Leave the sensitive stuff to the non-public forums. Serious hobbyists would be wise to join them.
Dear readers, a person with an Amex business card often receives offers to add up to 99 employees to their card. So, all you need to do is add yourself 99 times and fulfill the spending requirement on each. In total, you might earn 500k to 2 million MR points . . . PER CARD. It’s a blind spot for Amex.
How’s that for useful information?
(Dear Amex RAT, we know you’re reading.)
By 500k-2 mil per card do you mean per account or per AU card?
Per account. The AU offer is typically 5k to 20k MR each.
Now, the problem with posting this in a public forum is that Amex knows. So, the strategy will be shut down. And, those who try it might be shut down at Amex. This is the problem to which I was referring in my first comment above. And, it undermines the hobby.
At least this change isn’t immediate! Bad for those of us in points and miles.
From a bank’s perspective, I get it. Referral bonuses are an acquisition cost to try to get new customers and additional market share (along with card SUBs). If someone already has a Chase business card, a second referral to them isn’t acquiring a new customer which makes the ROI on that referral bonus less. One could make the case it can help capture more of that customer’s spend – I’d agree, but Chase must see enough on there end to believe they’d be fine without it (and that SUBs for additional cards are enough incentive).
For those who did it the Ink train must have really put some pain on Chase. Lowering referrals from 40K to 20K, making repeated Ink approvals much harder, and now eliminating multiple business referral bonuses altogether. Coupled with the Sapphire Business launch it seems that their business credit card product line might not have been performing to expectations.
Pain? I don’t think they’re feeling much pain. Their stock is at all time highs. This is just a continuation of the downward trajectory of this hobby. People who use points in miles as a hobby are a very, very small percentage of the population of credit card users. The vast majority do not maximize offers, and are more considered with the weight of their credit card, then their ability to to get outside value for miles.
Overall company performance doesn’t have to correlate with individual product lines or business units though. I’ve had a past workplace where a small business unit of 200 was mostly shuttered and laid off while a massive new division was created hiring 600+ to keep up with explosive growth in that other area. While I agree we are a small percentage of overall business those of us who optimize well (and the whales that take it much much further) have an outsized impact on performance of specific products and marketing efforts. If that weren’t true we wouldn’t see the US Bank Smartly card 4% earnings nerfed less than a year after product launch, and Chase cards would be infinitely churnable like Brian Kelly built his early fame from (why have 5/24 at all if points and miles enthusiasts don’t impact the bottom line?).
Everything in business is about continuous improvement and optimization – or as Mel Brooks put it in Space Balls, “the quest for more money”.
Agreed. How often is there actually good news in this hobby? I only discovered it about six months ago and it’s just a steady stream of devaluations and programs worsening.
Yes it’s not like devaluations are unexpected but the velocity of things getting worse on every level is unprecedented and sad. It’s why every blogger and podcast wont shut up about the sapphire reserve reboot because it’s the only chance for new and exciting news and that ended up being a sold B- launch at best.
credit card referral penalties for too much success always confused me. Every other industry rewards outsized success, banks discourage it. Do they or don’t they want more business and customers? Please help me understand.
The average person doesn’t refer all that much. It’s the hobbyist who does. That’s who they are after.
This is especially horrible for businesses like yours that offers content in exchange for a shot to refer its readers to offers and opportunities they may not have known about. How could you possibly know the credit card portfolios of people you refer through your content?? I consider this legalized stealing for the banks and about as scummy as it gets.
It’s not the same for the bloggers. They have a referral contract.
Big influencers/bloggers/Facebook groups have affiliate links where they get paid money from the banks so this isn’t a negative change for them unless they are also referring people from their personal referral links. This effects regular people more or smaller bloggers/influencers. So once this goes into effect hopefully more people will use the Frequent Miler links since their P2 won’t earn a referral bonus anyway. So anyone with affiliate links might actually benefit from this change.