Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase Ink Business Premier | Card Talk Ep9 | 10-10-24

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Not to be confused with the Preferred card, the Chase Ink Business Premier card is different in a few very important ways - most notably, it is a charge card and does not transfer directly to travel partners. (00:10) - The Chase Ink Business Premier is quite different from the Chase Ink Business Preferred, discussed in episode 4 of Card Talk here. (01:28) - This is a Visa Signature Business Charge Card (02:23) - Earning with the Chase Ink Business Premier card (02:53) - Points are best used by cashing out (unlike other Chase Ink cards, which earn Ultimate Rewards points that can be transferred to partners.) (05:37) - Purchase protections include Cell phone protection (up to $1K per claim) and Travel protections (06:58) - Watch our video tutorial for how to apply for Ink cards here or read the blog post here. Subscribe and Follow

Welcome to Card Talk, the show where we help you decide if this credit card belongs in your collection. Today's Card Talk is about the Chase Inc. Business Premier Card. This is not the Inc. Business Preferred Card. This is the Premier Card, which is different. It's actually very different. We talked about the, yeah, it is tricky. We talked about the ink business preferred card, which we like a lot in a card talk episode five. This is not that what's, what's this card all about?

This is an entirely different animal that will appeal to a different segment of customers and also that you need to know about so that you don't accidentally apply for the wrong one. And when I say the wrong one, I mean, not the one that you intend to. It's not that one is inherently bad and one is inherently much better. It's just that they're very different, yet not differently named, not not differently enough named probably because they both have that, you know, P Premier versus preferred. And you know, what's what's the difference between Premier and preferred? Well, we'll talk about that a little bit today, I guess. So the Chase Inc business Premier card has a $195 annual fee. So that's relatively expensive on the Chase business card side.

No foreign transaction fees. It is a Visa signature business charge card. And so I emphasize the word charge card because charge card is different than a credit card, a charge card. Well, let me maybe explain it the other way. A credit card gives you a revolving credit line where you pay for purchases. And then if you want, you don't have to pay them all back right away. You could take time to pay them, though we wouldn't advise that because the fees that you'll pay in interest will far outpace any value of the rewards that you'll get for those purchases. So we don't recommend maintaining a revolving balance anyway. a charge card doesn't allow that revolving balance instead you make purchases and they're due when you receive your statement so essentially

you have to pay off all of the purchases every month which is what you should be doing anyway so exactly you have to do what you should be doing anyway so exactly exactly so that's a good thing in my mind yeah yeah there you go it encourages people to do the right thing. Exactly. What about earning? What can you do? Yeah, so this card earns a standard 2% everywhere, 2% cashback everywhere. But on purchases of $5,000 or more, it earns 2.5%. So a very good earning rate, especially for a business card. And if you have lots of expenses where you're going to be spending more than $5,000 each time, you know, bumping up to two and a half percent is pretty darn good.

Where things are less good is how to use the rewards. So other Chase Inc. cards that are advertised as cashback cards are really cards that earn ultimate rewards points, which can be moved to other cards and then transferred to airline and hotel programs to get great value. This one earns points, but those points can not be used in any of those ways. You can't transfer to loyalty programs. You can't move to loyalty programs. You can't move the points to other cards to make them more flexible, more valuable. They're stuck with this card. So you really just use these points for cash back. I mean, I think there are some other things you could theoretically do, but there's nothing really else you'd want to do with these points, but get cash back. So think of it, even though it's called an ultimate rewards points earning card, you want to think of it as a cash back card.

Yeah, this is the one that's like limited rewards, not so ultimate. Yeah, calling it ultimate is a shame. That's actually my one complaint with this card is that Chase tells you you're earning ultimate rewards points but because they're so restricted there's nothing ultimate about them no nothing at all nothing at all whereas like greg said you may see a welcome bonus or ongoing earning rate on the chase inc cash or the chase inc unlimited cards being advertised as earning cash back those cards actually are an ultimate rewards points that you could redeem for cash back, or you could combine with your Chase Sapphire Reserve, for instance, in order to transfer to partners or use for more value for travel.

This is not like those. It earns ultimate rewards points that cannot be combined with anything else and cannot be transferred to airline and hotel partners. So before you go applying for the Chase Inc. Business Premier, know and understand that. But at the same time, if you're a business owner that makes a lot of purchases that are more than $5,000 a purchase, this card certainly can make a lot of sense, particularly for a business with really big expenses. I mean, if you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on your card, that's something you might be able

to do with a charge card, whereas it's much harder to do with a card with a traditional credit limit. Most issuers don't want to issue that much revolving credit to someone. So, you know, this is an easier way to spend potentially a lot of money and earn a really good return on it at two and a half percent. You know, and of course, whether or not Chase will actually allow you to spend $100,000 or more or whatever it is that you have to spend is that's a whole nother thing. But that's between you and and the bank the fact of the matter is that it's at least possible here and you know you can only cash out the points so just keep in mind it's really a cash back card now 195 seems expensive for a cash back card there must be some other perks yeah i mean it has a handful of standard perks like purchase protections uh travel protections, and it has cell phone protection, which is up to $1,000 per claim.

But yeah, I mean, where I think this card will be attractive to a lot of people is those who, first of all, prefer cash back over other types of rewards. And second, those who spend a lot for their business, there aren't that many business cards that earn high rates of uncapped rewards. So, you know, you have things like Capital One has 2%, but I don't think off the top of my head, there's a way to earn more than 2% cash back in that case. And there's other ways that are like through Bank of America, you could be earning up to 2.62% everywhere.

But that's very complicated how to go about doing it. If you just want straight cash back, that's earning 2% to 2.5% everywhere. I think it's a pretty solid option for that. There you go. That makes sense. But for people that are primarily interested in earning transferable points that you can send to airline and hotel programs and use for outsized value, this just probably wouldn't be a good fit. Those people need not apply. But for those who are interested in applying, we do have a video and a blog post about how to apply for Chase ink cards. So even though

this is not our favorite of the ink cards because of its limited use of points, you could follow the same instructions for how to apply if you're interested. And we'll, in the show notes, have both a link to a video showing how to apply and a blog post for those who prefer to read how to apply. There we have it. If you want more information about this card, don't forget you can find a direct link to our site in the show notes. Just expand the description box to find a link to our site. That's frequentmiler.com. You can join our email list at frequentmiler.com slash subscribe, and we'll see you next time.