Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Chase has announced the 5% categories for Q4 2019 and it’s a good selection – PayPal, Chase Pay & department stores will all earn at the 5% rate.
Those three categories aren’t being listed on the website yet (as you can see above), but One Mile at a Time is reporting that those will be the ways you can earn 5% from October 1 to December 31.
That should make it pretty easy to max out the $1,500 limit during Q4. Everyone’s methods will likely be different, but here are a few suggestions.
PayPal
PayPal is one of Discover’s 5% categories in the current quarter. I maxed out that card’s $1,500 quarterly limit a few weeks ago by making my Discover card the default payment option for my PayPal account. That included a few transactions when booking travel for 40k To Faraway to have a little extra cashback to spend on the trip, although my flights were all booked using the Chase Sapphire Reserve for its superior travel benefits.
PayPal is widely accepted on all kinds of sites, so that’ll probably be the easiest option for most people. If nothing else, you could buy gift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts to save 5% on those.
Chase Pay
If you have a phone with Samsung Pay, you can use Chase Pay with that to get the 5% cashback. Otherwise, several stores like Best Buy, Starbucks and Shell accept Chase Pay, as does ShopRite (I think) if you have any of their grocery stores near you.
Department Stores
With the holiday season falling in the final quarter, I’m sure most people will have some element of spending at department stores. Paying for online transactions at these stores will have the added benefit of earning cashback through shopping portals, although some department stores are also included for in-store cashback.
For example, Macy’s and JCPenney are part of the Rakuten/Ebates in-store cashback program, but at only 1% and 2% respectively, it’s not as rewarding as the online option. Having said that, JCPenney is on the Dosh app for 3% cashback for in-store purchases, so be sure to link your Freedom card to the app if it isn’t already.
Registration
Registration for these Q4 2019 categories opens on Sunday September 15, so we’ll provide registration links for Chase Freedom and the other cards offering 5% bonuses in a couple of days.
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Can you buy gift cards at a department store and qualify for the 5x back? Like go to Kohls and buy restaurant gift cards?
Yes, absolutely. An easier option is to buy them from PayPal Digital Gifts seeing as PayPal is one of the categories too. They have a much wider range of gift cards than department stores do. https://www.paypal.com/us/gifts/all
ShopRite accepts Chase pay.
Are there ms type tricks for using PayPal? If not, I expect only minimal benefits from our three freedoms.
I have to disagree and say these are terrible categories, I never shop at department stores, I use PayPal once every couple years, and chase pay is accepted at like 4 stores. I think this is similar to last year q4 in which I also wasn’t able to take advantage. I think it’s pretty ridiculous people have been known to crap on other quarters where gas stations, grocery stores, or pharmacy type stores are bonus categories and yet we’re going to call this a good bonus. At least at those categories you can buy gift cards to a hundred different places.
You can use PayPal Digital Gifts to buy pretty much the same range of gift card brands that you can in grocery stores.
Except no visa/mc. Dept store and paypal not useful for MS. Chase pay through Samsung pay is only good option.
That’s good to know but it’s still inconvenient to me. I like the categories I mentioned because going to those types of stores requires no changing of my everyday practices, I naturally find myself at those stores 2 or 3 times a week for each anyway, and I’m sure the average person does as well. But I suppose being happy with 3 out of 4 quarters is alright.
When are the 40k articles coming? I’ve been excited to read about this since you first set up the premise.
We’ll have more of the 40k articles coming up over the next couple of weeks before we set off, then you’ll be getting regular updates on the blog and through social media from the three of us throughout our trips.
Will using Chase Pay through Samsung Pay earn 5X at Walmart buying groceries?
It should do.