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Chase has added a new 5% spending offer on the Freedom Flex card which is in addition to its existing 5% quarterly offer.
The Deal
- Get 5% on your top spending category (from a select number of categories) on the Chase Freedom Flex card.
- Direct link to FAQs.
Key Terms
- Offer valid October 1 to December 31, 2021.
- Eligible spending categories:
- Travel (including Transit)
- Dining
- Home Improvement Stores
- Grocery Stores (not including Target and Walmart purchases)
- Drugstores
- Gas Stations
- Select Live Entertainment
- Select Streaming Services
- Fitness Clubs
Quick Thoughts
This is a great offer if you’re a Freedom Flex cardholder as it doubles your 5% earning allowance this quarter from $1,500 to $3,000.
However, note that the categories are different between the existing 5% offer and this new promotion. For the existing 5% category, Walmart and PayPal are the two eligible categories. For this new promotion, the list of eligible categories is listed above in the Key Terms section.
It seems like it is possible to stack the two spending offers. For example, if you use PayPal to make a purchase at Lowe’s, you should earn 5% as a result of paying by PayPal and the extra amount from this deal due to Lowe’s being a home improvement store and thus being one of the eligible spending categories. In that kind of scenario though, you’d only earn a total of 9% rather than 10% because the Freedom Flex card offers 1% as standard, a 4% bonus for PayPal and 4% for Lowe’s/home improvement.
Note that you’ll only earn 5% on your top spending category though, so you’ll want to pick which one is best for you. If you bought one Visa gift card at a grocery store, one at a drugstore and one at a gas station, you wouldn’t earn 5% on all three transactions. It’d therefore be best to buy three of them at just one type of store.
The best option for many will be to spend $1,500 at Walmart or PayPal for the standard 5%, along with $1,500 at drugstores. The reason why is because drugstores are a 3% category every day on the Freedom Flex card and so you’d earn a total of 7% for the $1,500 of purchases (1% as standard, 2% bonus for drugstores and 4% bonus from this new promotion). You’d therefore end up with a total of $180 cashback on your $3,000 of spend – $75 from PayPal/Walmart and $105 from drugstores.
Having said that, if you’ll be spending $1,500 organically at one of the top spend categories which happens to accept PayPal, you could earn 9% on that spend for a total of $135. While that’s obviously less cashback than $180, it’s also half the spend requirement.
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My top spend is still showing 0 on my ultimate rewards account. Made 2 secure messages inquiries to Chase and they don’t seem to know what I am talking about, keep just asking me which transaction I am talking about! Guess I need to make a call. Amex chat is much better!!
I used paypal to shop at CVS (a top spend category). I got +6x (4x paypal and 2x chase freedom flex)
But my extra 4x for top spend category has not posted yet. Has it posted for anyone yet
Raghu
Got my first statement after this deal ended, and… nothing. Just the standard 3x points for drug stores.
Courtesy of Wayback Machine [https://web.archive.org/web/20211018221913/https://creditcards.chase.com/freedom-credit-cards/flexfaq/topspendoffer], the terms state: “Please allow up to 8 weeks after the end of the offer period for your bonus cash back to post to your account.” Eight weeks from Dec. 31 is Feb. 25, so here’s hoping we see the points by then.
So is a triple stack on the CFF possible for Q1 2022. SUB + Q1 + Top Category, if top Category = groceries? So 13 UR/$
The Top Category offer ends on December 31, 2021.
Do I need to register for this offer on my Freedom Flex account?
Chase hasn’t put anything on their website that substantiates this “deal”. At least I can’t find anything on my Freedom Flex account. How do we know this is legit?
The link to the FAQs in this post is from Chase’s website.
Do hotel stays qualify under the “Travel” category?
Have an upcoming Embassy Suites Stay, that will be about $1100.
Was going to use my NF Hilton Card for 7x Hilton points, but I’d rather get 5k UR points IF Hotels code as “travel”
I feel like they made this promo unnecessarily complicated. I know cards with “adaptive” bonus categories seem to be a popular move right now (e.g. Custom Cash, Hyatt Business, Venmo), but I think I would just rather have an extra bonus category, or maybe raise the $1500 cap for the Holidays.
I always hated small quarterly caps like 1500. With the way inflation is climbing you’d think banks would get with the times.
Any clue if I can PC my Freedom card to Freedom Flex and still get this offer?
Yes, I think that should be possible.
Bad idea though since you can only get one freedom flex and can’t reclaim the freedom visa? Or can you still product change to CF(visa)?
Also if not mistaken, if you are earning 5 points on grocery as a new cardholder of freedom flex, you will also earn an additional 4 points for a total of 9 points if grocery is your highest spent category outside the Walmart/PayPal offer. So a possibility of 27000 points on $3000 if spent correctly?
Yep, if you have the spending bonus from the signup offer then you would earn that too.
Or paypal at drugstore (if largest category), possible 11%:
1% Base
2% Drugstore (normal Flex)
4% Largest Category
4% Paypal (4Q rotating)
Yes, I’m wondering if this would work — e.g. use PayPal app to pay at drug store . I’ll have to test if this works as expected. Might not be able to tell right away though as the “largest category” bonus doesn’t come til end of quarter.
Right, we won’t know until after the quarter ends. I did the entire 4Q 1500 at CVS with paypal before this new bonus was announced. I received 7X, so Chase is clearly treating these purchases as both drugstore and paypal purchases. I think Chase would be hard pressed to treat them differently for purposes of the Largest Category bonus, i.e. as only paypal (and not drugstore) purchases.
Does CVS allow gift card purchases with PayPal app.
yes
You’re all fortunate to still have somewhere to liquidate VGCs. My area is dead concerning that, thus my ms days are over. Unless something changes. I wonder if WU has seen a drop off in sales, or maybe other new people into the U.S. has helped keep their numbers up. I think it’s strange to allow cash only since cash is the problem for those who got it illegally and seek to ML without walking into a bank to make a large cash deposit.
What’s WU please?
I’m rolling the dice on this. Using Paypal QR code at CVS is so easy. Hoping for 11%.
Yes, this is in the FAQ, but where was this announced?? Some random FAQ on the website is not legally binding, how do we know this is actually an offer?
(I asked the same thing at DoC, noone answered..)