A number of people have noticed (1, 2, 3) that using Paypal for an airline purchase does not trigger the 5% rewards with Chase Freedom. Most Paypal charges show on the statement as “PAYPAL *JANESBOUTIQUE”, but airlines apparently worked out a special coding so that it just shows up as the airline charge directly.
This issue has been reported with Delta, Southwest (ymmv), United, British, and is probably true for all airline purchases. (Update 5/22/18: seems like America does work for 5x. )
We added a note to our original quarterly 5% post a few days ago, but thought it worth a separate heads-ups post here. If you already made the purchase, try SMing Chase and asking for a manual adjustment as that’s worked in the past.
On the positive side, this should mean that for the purposes of ordinary travel category bonuses, paying with Paypal is less likely to mess up the proper travel coding.
