Chase is now offering up to $250 as a signup bonus on the Ink Cash Business Card. You’ll earn 15,000 bonus points after your first purchase (worth $150 in cash), plus another 10,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 within the first 3 months (redeemable for another $100 in cash back).
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While not nearly as nice as their earlier “Match Your Miles” promo, Cap One has just sweetened its signup bonus on its Venture Rewards credit card, from 10,000 miles to 25,000 miles, good for $250 towards travel. You’ll earn your 25,000 bonus miles once you spend $1,000 within the first 3 months of opening your account.
As is standard for the Venture Rewards card, you’ll earn 2% back on all purchases that can only be redeemed towards travel. If you choose to instead redeem your miles for cash, they’ll instead be redeemed at a 1% reward rate. Another nice feature of the card is that, like all Cap One cards, there are no foreign transaction fees.
The card does carry a $59 annual fee, but it’s waived for the first year.
For more info, or to apply, see capitaloneventure.com.
According to a new thread on FW, there is now a targeted promo offering 100,000 bonus points after you spend $500 within the first 3 months, worth either $1250 towards free flights or $1000 in cash. To be eligible for the deal, you must have received a personalized invitation number from Chase in the mail. While the vast majority of us will not be lucky enough to receive this offer, there is still some very good news.
If you’ve taken advantage of the current 50,000 bonus point offer (which is quite generous as it is), it appears that Chase may be willing to basically match the targeted offer. A poster on SD reports:
I applied chase preferred sapphire card a few days ago with 50k bonus points after spending 3000$ in three months. Now I hear there is a better target promotion that is Earn 100,000 bonus points when you spend $500 within the first 3 months. I sent a secure message and asked them to match this offer, and they kindly offer me extra 50K points. Now the 50k points are shown in my account and I can earn extra 50k bonus points after spending 3000$ in three months. Hope you can get it as well!
If you applied recently, it certainly seems worth contacting Chase to see if the offer can be matched.
Edit 6/19: It seems many SD users who applied for the card recently are reporting success getting an additional 50k bonus points. The key appears to be logging into your Chase account and sending a secure message online to ask for the additional points, rather than calling and talking to a rep. Good luck!
Edit 6/22: Based on multiple reports, it appears that this deal is now dead. As of yesterday, people asking for the 100k deal to be matched were being turned down. The 50k point offer, however, is a very good deal, available to everyone and still alive.
While there are reports that a lucky few are getting targeted for a more lucrative offer, this is one of the better Chase Freedom deals that has been available to the general public. Under this promo, you’ll earn a $200 cash back bonus when you spend $1,500 within the first 6 months of opening a new account.
As is standard for the card, it carries no annual fee and you’ll earn 5% in categories that rotate quarterly. For instance, from July 1 through September 30, 2011, you’ll earn 5% on up to $1,500 in spending on gas, hotel and airline purchases. All other purchases earn 1% cash back.
In addition to the 50,000 bonus ThankYou point promo Citi is offering on its Premier Card, Citi has temporarily sweetened its deal on the ThankYou Preferred Card. Until June 30, 2011, you’ll earn 26,000 bonus ThankYou points, redeemable for $250 in gift cards when you open a new Citi ThankYou Preferred Card and spend at least $1,000 within 3 months.
(Update 5/15/12: Currently, you’ll earn 25,000 points redeemable for $250 in gift cards once you spend at least $2,000 within 4 months of opening a Citi ThankYou Preferred Card account.)
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Note: As of 8/15/11, this 50,000 bonus ThankYou points offer has expired. To see the current Citi ThankYou deals, see the following links:
Citi has just launched a brand new limited-time offer: you’ll earn 50,000 bonus ThankYou points for spending $2,000 in the first 3 months of opening a new Citi ThankYou Premier Card account. This signup bonus is enough for $665 worth of airfare when you redeem your points through the ThankYou Travel Center. Alternatively, you could exchange your 50,000 points for $500 in gift cards or other rewards.
You’ll also earn 1.2 points per $1 when you use the card at gas stations, supermarkets, drugstores, and at commuter transportation and parking merchants. Everywhere else, you’ll earn 1 point per $1 spent.
In addition, some of the card’s other benefits include:
The Premier Card does carry a $125 annual fee which is not waived for the first year under this offer. The annual fee is permanently waived, however, if you are a CitiGold customer. For this reason alone, the current Chase Sapphire deal is the better value at this time for non-CitiGold customers if you were only going to apply for a single card. Nevertheless, this 50,000 bonus ThankYou points promo is still an attractive option.
Note 8/15: This promo has now expired. For the latest Citi ThankYou deals, see the following links:
Chase is now offering 50,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 within the first 3 months of getting your Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That’s double the number of points it was previously offering, enough for 2 airline tickets or a statement credit of $500.
Redeeming Your Chase Sapphire Points
With Chase Sapphire points, you have a number of redemption options. You can convert your Chase Sapphire points into BA miles, Continental miles or Hyatt miles at a 1:1 ratio at any time you want. Point transfers are also possible to Amtrak, Priority Club and Marriott at lower conversion ratios.
If you convert your 50,000 points to one of these programs, what does that get you?
Alternatively, if you use Chase’s online travel portal, you can redeem your 50,000 points towards $625 worth of airfare or hotel accommodations.
For those who aren’t into travel or prefer cold hard cash, you can also redeem the 50,000 points for a $500 gift card or a $500 statement credit.
The annual fee of $95 is waived for the first year. You can also downgrade to the standard version of the card after a year, which does not carry an annual fee.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred card also earns double the number of points per dollar spent on travel (including air, hotel, car rental, trains, travel agencies, taxis, etc.) and on dining purchases (from fast food and coffee shops to fine dining).
In addition, there are no foreign exchange fees when you use the card overseas and you’ll earn a 7% annual points dividend on any points you earned during the year, so you actually earn 1.07 points per dollar spent on regular purchases and 2.14 per dollar spent on travel and dining, making it a particularly excellent choice for the international traveler.
Update 4/3/12: The 50,000 point offer has expired and has been replaced by an intro offer for 40,000 points, making this deal slightly less lucrative. 40,000 points is still enough to redeem towards a $400 statement credit or $500 in travel when redeemed through Chase’s Ultimate Rewards portal.
Under the terms of this offer, you’ll receive 50,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $500 within the first three months of opening a new Premier Rewards Gold card account. In addition, the annual fee of $175 will be waived for the first two years of your membership. Other benefits of the card remain the same, including: earn 3x points on airfare, 2x points on gas and groceries and 1x points on everything else.
Note: According to SD, this offer appears to be targeted to Columbia 2011 and 2012 MBA students, so YMMV on receiving your bonus points.
Through May 31, 2011, when you apply for a Miles & More Premier World MasterCard, you can earn up to 50,000 bonus miles — enough for a round-trip transatlantic ticket from the US. You’ll receive 20,000 bonus miles after your first purchase and an additional 30,000 bonus miles after spending $2,500 within 90 days of opening your account.
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The first credit card to ever feature a 100,000 mile signup bonus has just brought it back. For a limited time, through May 6, 2011, the British Airways Visa Signature card is offering up to 100,000 bonus BA miles, enough for 2 transatlantic roundtrip reward flights. You’ll receive 50,000 bonus BA miles after your first purchase, plus an additional 50,000 bonus BA miles after you spend $2,500 within the first 3 months of opening your account.
BA miles can also be spent on partner airlines including AA, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, JAL, LAN, Hungarian Airlines, Mexicana, Qantas, Royal Jordanian Airlines and S7. The card does carry a $95 annual fee.
Standard features of the card include:
Edit May 6, 2011: This offer has now expired.
Edit May 16, 2011:While the offer for 100,000 BA miles has expired, you can read this post describing how you can get 50,000 BA miles with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, with no annual fee for the first year.