Chase released the new Sapphire Reserve for Business card yesterday, along with launching an updated version of the personal Sapphire Reserve card. If you were hoping to refer someone to one or both of those cards, that wasn’t possible yesterday as the site where you generate referral links wasn’t working when trying to do that from a Sapphire Reserve or Preferred card. The alternate method explained here wasn’t working either.
Well, you’re back in luck as that referral ability has returned. What’s not clear yet is if you’ll earn bonus points for referring someone to the Sapphire Reserve for Business cards from one of these cards.
There’s also some restrictive wording regarding earning referral points if too many people use your referral link in a month.
Return of referral links
When using a referral link, the person applying for the card can earn the same welcome offer as through other publicly available sources – 75,000 bonus points on $5,000 spend in three months for a Sapphire Preferred card or 100,000 bonus points + $500 Chase Travel℠ promo credit after spending $5,000 in the three months after account opening for the Sapphire Reserve card.
As the referrer, you’ll earn 15,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards points. That’s the case whether you refer from a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve and it also doesn’t matter which of those two cards the referee applies for.
That means that in a situation where one person refers another person in their household, they’ll earn a total of 90,000 points for a Sapphire Preferred application or 115,000 points for a Sapphire Reserve application (and after completing the required minimum spend).
Can you refer to a Sapphire Reserve for Business card?
That’s not entirely clear yet. When someone uses a referral link generated from a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card, they’ll see three possible cards listed in the sidebar (on desktop) or at the top of the page (on mobile):
That would – in theory – suggest that if someone uses your referral link to apply for a Sapphire Reserve for Business card you’ll earn bonus points. However, I’m not convinced that’s the case. If you check the page where you generate your referral link, you’ll see the following wording:
That’s 15,000 bonus points for each friend who gets the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card.
It also says:
Your friend gets rewarded too with 100,000 bonus points for opening a new Sapphire Reserve account or 75,000 bonus points for opening a new Sapphire Preferred account, both upon completing qualifying activities.
Note that it doesn’t mention the Sapphire Reserve for Business card in either of those sections, nor does it mention the welcome offer that can be earned on that card. That leads me to believe that it is indeed only the two personal Sapphire cards where you’ll earn referral points, but let us know in the comments if that’s not the case if you have any data points in the future.
Restrictive referral regulations
Eagle-eyed Nick noticed something interesting in the terms and conditions this morning too.
Earn up to 100,000 Bonus Points: You can receive 15,000 bonus points for each friend you refer through this Refer-A-Friend offer (up to 7), who is approved for the card. Maximum bonus points accumulation for this offer is 100,000 bonus points. If 10 or more of your friends use the referral URL within a month to apply, at Chase’s discretion you may not receive any bonus points for the friends who apply that month and are approved for the card. We may provide you with future opportunities to earn bonus points by referring your friends to any participating Chase Sapphire Credit Card. Participating Chase Sapphire Cards include: Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve. You may earn bonus points up to the stated maximum for each offer, however, please note that if you take advantage of multiple opportunities within one calendar year that the maximum number of bonus points that can be awarded from all referral offers is 100,000 per calendar year. In the event the bonus points you earn from all referral offers exceeds the 100,000 per calendar year limit, you may be awarded a partial amount to keep your total bonus at 100,000 bonus points. For example if you have already accumulated 90,000 bonus points from refer-a-friend offers that calendar year and the maximum is 100,000 bonus points per calendar year, then the next award will be 10,000 even if the offer states 15,000.
All the bolding in that quote text is Chase’s, but there’s a non-bolded part that we wanted to highlight:
If 10 or more of your friends use the referral URL within a month to apply, at Chase’s discretion you may not receive any bonus points for the friends who apply that month and are approved for the card.
Yep – if ten or more friends or family members use your referral link in a month to apply, you might earn a grand total of zero referral bonus points. It’s not entirely clear what Chase is trying to achieve with this. I’d have thought that if people are genuinely applying for a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card from someone’s link and they generate 10+ referrals, they’d be happy about that, especially seeing as the referrer is capped at earning 100,000 bonus points in a year. With the current referrer offer being 15,000 bonus points, they’ll max out after seven referrals, so anything above that is gravy for Chase.
Anyway, for the majority of people this won’t be an issue as your average person isn’t going to refer more than ten people in a month. However, if you’re in a niche position where you can generate a lot of referrals through millions of Instagram followers, being someone prominent on Reddit, etc., it’s something to be aware of.
This 10+ wording might have been there for some time, but none of us had ever noticed it before and so we wanted to highlight it.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
That specific wording was on my Southwest referral pages for several months at a minimum. Despite maxing out on four cards, Chase did not throttle my referral bonuses (other than the previously stated annual maximum).
However, I have noticed one other oddity… for P2 and I both, the Sapphire tracker shows a maximum of 75k. The language on the page still says 100k maximum, but the graphic and the “you can still earn…” reflect 75k max. I’ve had four referrals so far and P2 has had one, so I don’t believe we’re running afoul of the aforementioned language. Have you seen that before?
The personal cards just toggle the page around. But when clicking on the Business CSR, it opens a new tab. Further indicating that the referral wouldn’t track.
I keep getting a page telling me “It looks like this offer is no longer available” when I try to apply using my wife’s referral link. Anyone else having that issue?
Edit: this issue is only present with the Sapphire Reserve application link. No issues with the Sapphire Preferred, but I don’t want that one!
same issue here
Issue was fixed for me. Previously generated links worked – instant approval.
Tried in my pc in two browsers and it worked!