Frequent Miler on the Air - The real Sapphire Reserve for Business | Coffee Break Ep59 | 6-17-25

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Chase is out with new details about their Sapphire Reserve for business card...and there are a few ways our predictions from last week were way off. Today, we'll talk about how we were wrong about the Sapphire Reserve for Business card.The real Sapphire Reserve for BusinessFind our predictions episode here: https://frequentmiler.com/predicting-the-sapphire-business-card-frequent-miler-on-the-air-ep310-6-13-25/(01:03) - $795 fee, free employee cards, and earning rate details...(02:32) - Major perks of the card(06:51) - Major "coupon-like" credits of the cardVisit giftcards.com/reservebusiness here.(11:17) - Nick's initial Review(13:42) - Greg's initial ReviewVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a VoyEscape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. On today's coffee break, the real Sapphire Reserve for Business Card. Chase is out with full details about their new business card, and it's not exactly what we predicted last week. Last week's show predicting the Sapphire Business Card, Nick and I decided it was almost certainly a refresh

of the current Chase Inc. business preferred card. And the real news is that it's not that at all, not even the littlest, teeniest bit. It was almost certainly going to be that, but we left room, we left room to be wronged. We did. And so, so you know, here we are. Here we are. Not this time.

We mean business. But let's let's get down to it. Let's talk about the new Sapphire Reserve business is has now been officially announced. So the new Sapphire for business card looks similar, but distinctly different still from the Sapphire Reserve consumer card. And we'll start with some of the things that you are probably already familiar with like the $795 annual fee. Woo, steep, but that's the new annual fee.

This one has free employee cards. So if you have employees who you want to be using the card for spend, it won't cost you anything to add the employees, though you also won't really get any benefits for the employees. It's really just the benefit of being able to earn points on their purchases. Speaking of earning points on purchases, this card is going to earn 4x on flights and hotels booked directly with the airlines and hotel providers, very similar to the consumer version of the card, and 8x on all travel booked through Chase Travel. 3x on social media and search engine

advertising. So if you spend a lot on those categories, you'll earn 3x on those and 5x on Lyft through September 30th of 2027. So it's got earning rates that are very similar, just a little bit different than the consumer version. Yeah. And we'll be covering the full details of the consumer version on Thursday's show, or sorry, on Friday's show.

We tend to record on Thursdays. But you can also hurry to the blog if you wanna get full details of all of this stuff, the business and the consumer card. We have it all published on the blog. Let's talk about the major perks of this card. We're not going to go into every little tiny thing, but the major perks, you have priority pass and Sapphire lounge access for yourself plus two guests. Not for employees though. So if you've issued any of those free employee cards, your employees are out of

luck and they can, you could guess two of them in if they happen to be traveling with you and the rest of your employees can look longingly through the, through the window at how much you're enjoying the lounge from there. Um, hopefully you don't use too many of the ZipRecruiter credits, or you're going to have a whole bunch of unhappy employees. We'll get there. You're jumping ahead.

In addition to lounge access, you've got excellent travel protection. So good news is that the same best in class travel protections that the Sapphire Reserve Card has long had will continue with the new Sapphire Reserve and importantly also with the new safari reserve and importantly also with the safari reserve for business cards. So if that's important to you, that's a great feature.

The ability to transfer points is there as expected. And you can redeem points through chase travel for up to $0.02 per point value. Now, this is a little tricky because the base redemption rate is only $0.01 per point. That's all you get. So it's not like the old Sapphire Reserve where you're getting $0.05 per point everywhere. And it's not like the Inc. Business Preferred, the $95 business card where you get 1.25 cents per point value right now. It's one cent per point, but they have these things called point boosts where sometimes

when you search for flights and hotels and things, you'll see an opportunity to get this points boost. You'll be able to redeem for better value up to two cents per point. We've been told that there's like a list of airlines that you're likely to find those point boosts for and we'll publish those on the blog rather than talk through those details here. But that'll change over time. However, one thing that sounds like it's certain is Chase has this group of hotels where you can book luxury hotels and get other perks at the same time. They call that program the edit. And if you book through the edit, it sounds like these power boosts will always be available. So you can get

two cents per point value when booking the edit hotels. So that's very nice, especially since the edit hotels also, if they happen to be a major chain, you also earn hotel points and status credits and things like that. Yeah, I think that's pretty interesting because that provides a way to book luxury hotels, presumably with good point value, whether or not they belong to a chain. So I think that's a potentially interesting point though of course the variability here with regard to airline redemptions is a bit of a concern I mean obviously when

you're getting to two cents per point that'll be great but when you're only getting one cent per point not great at all and what I additionally don't like is that a lot of people are gonna have to bust out a calculator to figure it out, especially if it's not one or two cents, but rather 1.5 and 1.75 and 1.25, because there's gonna be different boosts. So, yeah, not thrilled about that for the airline redemption.

Right, right. The other thing Chase told us is that the airfare redemptions. Right, right. The other thing Chase told us is that the airfare redemptions will vary based on various factors. And one of the factors seems to be class of service. So I think you're more likely to get two cents per point value if you're booking regional first class or international business class

kind of thing and less likely with economy. Though that might be good in certain situations because we sometimes see international business class fairs that are good enough that if you're able to get $0.02 per point, then you may end up spending fewer points on a paid ticket where you'll earn miles than you would on an award ticket. So it'll be worth keeping your eye out

for those opportunities. Yeah, yeah, definitely. All right, Card also has a bunch of major credits now, coupon credits. So let's talk about a couple of those. So first of all, it's got the easy breezy $300 travel rebate credit that the Sapphire Reserve has long been well known for. So you spend $300 cumulatively on travel and you're in the state 300 up to $300 in statement credits each card member year

So that's again simple and automatic nothing special you need to do there You'll get a two hundred and fifty dollar credit for booking hotels through the edit. So again, that's the sort of chase competitor to find hotels and resorts or virtuoso or that sort of booking platform where you'll be booking some sort of curated hotels with additional benefits and things like a hundred dollar credit. So again that's up to two hundred and fifty dollars in credit January to June and July to December. Though keep in mind that there is a two night minimum on bookings through the edit to qualify for this credit. So you'll need to be booking at least two nights in order to be able to qualify for that. Additionally, you get a ZipRecruiter credit.

So similarly, you'll get up to $200 in credit for purchases at ZipRecruiter twice per year, once January through June, once July through December. So if you're hiring new people, that can come in handy. Though don't hire too many of them, or like we said, you'll have to leave them all outside the lounge. And then Google Workspace, you can get up to $200 per year that one is not divided into separate six-month credits like some of the others yes I think you could

presumably use that all at once giftcards.com you can get up to $50 in statement credits twice per year again once January to June once July to December but on a specifically curated list of gift cards, we don't yet know exactly what that's going to look like. It's going to be available at gift cards dot com slash reserve business. But at least the last I've checked, that's not quite live yet. So we don't know necessarily which brands or cards may or may not be available. But there you have it. Fifty dollars.

I think we can we can guess there're cards that we don't want. That could be, that could be. And then you get a $10 Lyft credit each month. And that's as a coupon at Lyft, right? When you go to- Yeah, it just automatically, when you bring up the Lyft app, it just automatically takes $10 off of your charge once a month.

So it's very easy to use So in a in addition to all those coupons, they also throw in some coupons and benefits If you've spent a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in a calendar year, so that is a hefty amount of spending this is the biggest difference I think from the personal card like so far, yeah, the specific coupons have been different and stuff, but the personal card has these, most of these same benefits at $75,000 spend. Business card requires $120,000 spend to get

IHG diamond status, Southwest A-list status. So those are two handy statuses to have. $500 in Southwest, a credit, but through Chase Travel. So it's not like $500 of Southwest money. It's actually, you have to be booking flights through Chase Travel to get to use that. And then $500 of the shops credit, which is a, the shops is a a we talked about this last week. The shops

is like a, you know, an online marketplace for overpriced things that chase put through together. And so you get $500 worth of that stuff. That's more than the personal card, the personal card gives you $250 of overpriced things. So you can get even more of that overpriced stuff. See, you were wondering why you might spend $120,000 instead of $75,000 for this stuff. You got to spend that extra $45,000 so you can get another $250 worth of stuff. Come on, Craig. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're overstaying our welcome during this coffee break. I imagine we're going to go over our 20 minutes,

but that's okay, that's okay. We can do it. We got that in the budget? We can pay everyone back. We'll pay everyone back, it's fine. And you know what? If everybody accepts the Sapphire Reserve Business Card, maybe we could earn the $120,000 spend benefits

just by paying everyone back. Maybe maybe Probably not but maybe all right neck. All right What let's hear your review of this of this card? I think it's kind of lackluster. I'm a little surprised to be honest So, you know if you're going to book hotels through the edit if you're somebody who's already doing that You know hotels through the edit if you're somebody who's already doing that you know perhaps because maybe you already have a sapphire reserve consumer card and You already do book regularly through them and you use the $300 annual travel credit Then you might look at this and say well I mean the zip recruiter credit in the Google workspace credit and you know some of the other

Miscellaneous small stuff is just icing on the cake and so because the card Kind of you could say pays for itself with those credits. Although personally I find that pretty weak because that credit for bookings through the edit is pretty restrictive in the sense that you have to be booking a two nights day. You have to be doing it twice a year and not just any two times a year once between January and June and once between July and December. That to me just creates so much opportunity for breakage that I don't get anywhere near

$500 worth of excitement out of that the edit credit. And so you know, you take the $800 bucks you're paying for the annual fee basically and subtract the $300 and travel because that's super easy to use and I spend that much on travel every year. I don't feel like there's $500 more in value for me in this card over the course of the year, particularly because I'm not spending any money at ZipRecruiter or Google Workspace. And I think that it's interesting that this card is really not appealing for a sole proprietorship at all because that ZipRecruiter credit is worthless for anybody for a sole proprietorship at all because that zip recruiter credit is worthless for anybody with a sole proprietorship.

Uh, and if you have a pretty small business, you're probably not hiring someone or needing to spend money on hiring every six months. So this really kind of cuts out a lot of the small business card or small business card holders anyway. So, and the big spend bonuses requires a lot of spend for, of so so benefits that I might be willing to spend the 75 K for maybe on the consumer card. It depends on your pencil out the math there. But I've certainly not going after those intentionally on this card. So if you happen to be spending $120,000 a year on qualifying travel, well, great have at it. But but I wouldn't I wouldn't get too excited. So I find this kind of lackluster. I expected a little bit more, to be honest.

Yeah, totally. I'm the same way I am surprised. I, you know, Chase really revolutionized the like premium card space when they came out with the Sapphire Reserve a number of years ago. And and I was expecting something really big here that that would make it like premium card space when they came out with the Sapphire Reserve a number of years ago. And I was expecting something really big here that would make it really desirable, especially the business card. And I feel like it's the other way around. Well, no, it's not the other way. The personal one, I mean, we'll talk about that separately, but the personal one is better in a lot of ways. Like the credits are more applicable to more people,

I think, than the business card. And the business card doesn't even bonus dining, which is, I feel like a big mistake because business people, when traveling, they dine out a lot. So yeah, this card confuses me. I don't understand what Chase was thinking, you know, because it's not the sort of big splash that I expected them to make and I don't, as I said, I just don't see if you're

interested in some of the flashy perks like the ability to get up to two cents per point value with the edit. Like I could actually see if you're really interested in the edit hotels, the combination of the every six months, $250 credit, plus the ability to get two cents per point. Like maybe you could book stays where you pay mostly with points,

but leave $250 off, you know, in order to get the credit as well, then, you know, it could make a lot of sense. But I think for most people, if that's you, look at the personal card. It's probably the better bet for you. Yeah, that's and that surprises me. I really did expect like you said, I expected they would kind of turn the world on its head and give us a business card that really competed with some of the other ultra premium business cards and this is okay at best and Even then a little weaker. Yeah, I would have thought

right Meanwhile, if you want a card that that is a business card and bonuses travel spend the ink business preferred is still 3x for all travel and the Ink Business Preferred is still 3X for all travel and only 95 bucks. Now, I am still predicting a refresh on that card is coming, but as it turned out, it's not coming exactly when this new Sapphire Reserve business card is here. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this

and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our Frequent Miler on the Air episodes dropping every Friday. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking and thinking about travel.

Not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful. On the Fromer's Travel Show, we explore the trends, people and ideas shaping how we see the world. If you care about the why as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at voyescape.com.