Co-Branded Chase Credit Cards To Get Before The Rule Change + Best Offer For Each Card + Application Rules & Tips

We earlier report that Chase will soon be extending their 5/24 rule to co-branded credit cards sometime in April. If you don’t already know what the 5/24 rule is, basically it means if you’ve opened more than five new credit card accounts in the past 24 months, you won’t be approved for any new cards from Chase. Currently this rule only applies to Chase Ultimate Reward earning personal cards (e.g Chase Freedom & Chase Sapphire Preferred), we believe it’ll be extended to Chase Ultimate Reward earning business cards (e.g Chase Ink Plus) in March and then will be extended to all Chase cards (both business & personal) in April).

At the moment we don’t know if there will be any work arounds (I expect there will be). Most people that read this blog apply for a lot more than five cards every two years, so this might be your last chance to grab some Chase cards. I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at the Chase application rules & best practices, the current best offers for each Chase credit card and the best current offers overall.

Contents

1 Chase Application Rules & Best Practices
2 Best Offer For Each Card
3 Personal Cards
4 Business Cards
5 Best Cards To Get Before The Rule Change
6 Final Thoughts

Chase Application Rules & Best Practices

Chase will usually approve a maximum of two new credit cards per month (it can be possible to get three, but this requires a reconsideration call – numbers for Chase can be found here, along with our tips here). This can be risky considering the advice to let it process naturally below, so just stick to two applications per month.
If you’re not instantly approved for a card, let it process naturally. If you call reconsideration it’s likely that you’ll be denied, base on the 5/24 rule even though it officially hasn’t gone into effect yet.
Chase will merge multiple applications into a single hard pull. This is only true if you’re applying for two personal cards, or two business cards. They won’t merge one business and one personal card into a single hard pull. More information about this can be found here.
If you’ve got the sign up bonus on a card before, you need to wait 24 months since the time you received the sign up bonus to get it again. More information on the Chase churning rules here.

For most people the best option will be to apply for two personal cards (or two business cards) in the same day to get the hard pulls combined. If you’re not really worried about the number of hard pulls on your credit reports, you could do a mixture.

Best Offer For Each Card

As far as I know, the offers listed below are the best offers available for each card. Please wait until the end of the day before applying, because if I’m wrong somebody will surely correct me in the comments (or on Twitter) and I’ll happily update the links. I’ve split the cards up into personal & business cards and then further broken them down into categories:

I’ve also listed the best public offer, if there is a targeted offer I’ve listed it below and indented with some information on how you might go about getting targeted for it. The cards listed in this section are in no particular order. As always, none of these contain affiliate links.

Personal Cards

Airline Credit Cards

Chase Southwest Premier: 50,000 points after $2,000 in spend. $99 annual fee is not waived
Chase Southwest Plus: 50,000 points after $2,000 in spend. $69 annual fee is not waived.
Chase United MileagePlus Explorer: 30,000 miles after $1,000 in spend and an additional 5,000 for adding an authorized user and making a purchase.
- Possible to get 50,000 miles + 5,000 for adding an authorized user + $50 statement credit by making a dummy booking (few other methods also mentioned in that post)
Chase United MileagePlus Club Card: $100 statement credit after first purchase. Annual fee of $450 is not waived.
- Possible to get the annual fee waived in most cases, more information here.
Chase British Airways: 50,000 Avios after $2,000 in spend, an extra 25,000 after $10,000 in spend or an extra 50,000 after $20,000 in spend (first year). Annual fee of $95 is not waived.

Chase Branded

Keep in mind, these already have the 5/24 rules applied to them (not entirely sure if the Chase Slate does have this rule applied or not).

Chase Sapphire Preferred: 50,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after $4,000 in spend. $50/5,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after adding an authorized user.
Chase Freedom: $150/15,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after $500 in spend. $25/2,500 Chase Ultimate Reward points after adding an authorized user.
Chase Slate: 0% Introductory APR for 15 months on purchases & balance transfers and 0% balance transfer fee for the first 60 days.

Hotel Cards

Chase Hyatt: 2 free nights at any Hyatt property worldwide after $1,000 in spend and 5,000 Hyatt points for adding an authorized user and them making their first purchase.
- Sometimes possible to get the same offer but with a $50 statement credit when making a dummy booking on the Hyatt website.
Chase IHG: 80,000 points after $1,000 in spend
- There is an offer for 80,000 points after $1,000 in spend + $50 statement credit when you make a dummy booking on IHG, not available to all
Chase Marriott Premier: 80,000 points after $3,000 in spend and 7,500 points for adding an authorized user and them making their first purchase. The annual fee of $75 not waived on this card
- Was a 70,000 point + 7,500 point offer for Marriott elite members, looks to be now removed.
Ritz Carlton: 2 free nights at any participating Tier 1-4 Ritz-Carlton hotel after $4,000 in spend. Annual fee of $395 is not waived for the first year, but comes with a bunch of other benefits like $300 annual airline credit.
Chase Fairmont: 2 free nights after $3,000 in spend. Annual fee waived first year.

Misc

Business Cards

Best Cards To Get Before The Rule Change

This is going to vary highly on a number of different factors, for example:

Are you looking for a good card to hold long term? Or just want a high sign up bonus?
Do you want cash back? Hotel points? Airline miles?

That being said, here are some ideas on different combinations/cards worth looking at:

Two southwest cards. Once you’ve completed the minimum spend requirements you will have earned 104,000 Southwest points. If you earn a total of 110,000 Southwest points you’ll get the Southwest companion pass, this lets somebody fly for free with you on both paid and award tickets until the end of the following calendar year. If you’ve got somebody (or a few people, you can change your companion up to three times per year) you want to travel mostly domestic with, this is outstanding value. Even if work arounds make it possible to sign up for Chase co-branded cards again, I doubt you’ll be able to get the two cards that are needed to make this deal easy.
Chase Ink Plus. If you have a business and haven’t gotten the bonus on this card in the last 24 months, it’s an absolute must in my eyes. It comes with a massive sign up bonus ($600 cash or 60,000 in flexible points) and earns 5% on categories that are actually useful (easy to purchase gift cards at office supply stores and some online merchants code as 5% as well). You can always downgrade to the Ink Cash when the annual fee comes due as well and keep the 5% categories if you don’t need the full $50,000 in spend/option to transfer the points to airline partners.
IHG. Good card to keep long term in my opinion, free night more than covers the annual fee in my opinion and usually your promotions are easier to hit when you hold the card as well.
Hyatt/Fairmont. If you want to stay at luxury properties, then these are the cards for you. The nice thing about the Fairmont card is that you can use the room/suite upgrades on award stays.
United. Always nice to have a stack of United miles, especially if you can grab the 55k + $50 offer.
AARP. Personally not enticing to me with the news, but $200 is the best cash sign up bonus on the personal cards.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully people found this interesting, if people did I’ll do it for different credit card issuers as well and slowly update our full best offer page. Let me know what cards you’re going to be applying for and why as well in the comments below.

Name*

Website

52 Comments

newest

oldest most voted

adam d (@guest_236953)

March 25, 2016 02:22

#236953

Just applied today, instant approval chase british airways, was approved for UA business 2 weeks ago after a week of pending. opened 11 cards the last 2 years, 5/24 hasnt applied yet, grab what you can now….side not thanks DOC, opened 5 checking accounts last 2 month from you page, $1200 total so far, have a few more to do.

Paul (@guest_235334)

March 21, 2016 14:24

#235334

If the first app goes into pending should you still apply for a 2nd card to combine the HP?

TJ (@guest_234289)

March 17, 2016 22:42

#234289

FYI – It looks like it’s no longer possible to apply ofr a business card with $0.00 annual revenue. In years past, i did Ink Plus as well as Citi AAdvantage putting $0.00 revenue while showing annual income on the personal info section. If i try to put $0.00 income on the app for Chase United Business, it won’t let me put a 0 in there.

Noah (@guest_234001)

March 16, 2016 22:53

#234001

Does anyone know if Chase counts the date of application or the date of approval for the two cards in 30 days rule? I want to squeeze in an IHG card before the 5/24, but I don’t want to get denied due to too many inquiries.

Also, I applied for the Ink+ and was denied for too many recent inquiries and accounts, even though my newest Chase card was already almost 4 months old (other than the Hyatt the week before, but that was still only one card in 30 days).

J. Sarayda Shapiro (@guest_233994)

March 16, 2016 22:08

#233994

Is the 5/24 rule in effect now for Chase Business cards? or will it go into effect sometime later in March?

Isabel (@guest_232952)

March 13, 2016 20:04

#232952

I applied for the Chase BA card but didn’t get an instant approval. Does it make sense to try applying for the Hyatt or IHG card on the same day hoping there’ll only be one hard inquiry?

P (@guest_232290)

March 10, 2016 16:59

#232290

Sometimes Chase will call you to verify information, such as asking questions about a estranged relative’s date of birth and the state they live in. Call came from the fraud department to my sister.

PS: I’m not the estranged brother :). Luckily, she remembered his birthday.

jasmin (@guest_230888)

March 5, 2016 02:27

#230888

For the chase ink, what are some bank accounts that allow funding over $2000? thanks

Jeff (@guest_227749)

February 22, 2016 19:06

#227749

My two Chase Freedom cards have modest limits which I would like to get improved but not combined into one card.. I only have two or three inquires in the past two years total. Chase may have done occasional credit check soft pulls from time to time on these cards.
Using the soft pull Chase offers page usually gets no offers.
I have about 4 BTs outstanding including one of my Chase Freedom cards.
I have two new cards with equally modest limits from other issuers.
Any recommendations?

Gary (@guest_227465)

February 21, 2016 03:43

#227465

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the merged pulls. A couple of points:
A) It’s not magic, and it’s not a “trick”. There’s a very simple explanation why it happens.
B) Every time you apply for a card, the system automatically pulls your credit (unless you’re in the system to be auto denied, as in with amex).
C) Some banks code business and personal separately, some banks the same. That’s why your results will vary if a personal and business application will result in one pull or two, depending on the issuer.
D) Being approved that day doesn’t make a difference for most banks. When the application is reviewed, they are reviewing your credit report that was pulled at the time of application. (Sometimes the application is put on hold for verification, particularly with amex. When this happens, after the green light is given on your application, your credit is pulled again. This can result in multiple pulls for one application, in some cases.)
E) Credit pulls are really not such a big deal. The new accounts are a much bigger deal. If you sign up for two credit cards and get one credit pull, you’re more likely to get rejected for that than someone who signs up for one credit card and gets two credit pulls. Don’t sweat it. The impact on your score is pretty minor.