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The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card from Chase currently offers one of the best welcome bonuses on the market, but there’s a lot more to this card than just a one-off points bonanza – this is a credit card that offers excellent spending category bonuses, that makes other great credit cards even better, and that offers one of the rarer (and more useful) credit card benefits around.
The Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
In brief
The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card is one of the best small business credit cards on the market today. It offers strong earnings in key spending categories that are often heavily used by small businesses, it has a relatively low annual fee, it offers a number of excellent benefits that are not offered by a lot of other business credit cards, and it earns cardholders valuable Ultimate Rewards Points which can be converted with ease to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs.
Who this card is aimed at
Contrary to a lot of common misconceptions, this isn’t a card that’s necessarily aimed at major businesses.
Your business doesn’t have to be your primary source of income to qualify for this card, and you don’t need to have a long-established business to be eligible to get this card (although that certainly helps).
If you have a side hustle that brings in extra income (selling on eBay, tutoring, rideshare driving, etc…) you could qualify for a small business credit card like the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card and you could use it to help you keep your private expenditure separate from your business spending – something that can come in very useful at tax time.
In detail
Here’s what you need to know about the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card:
Annual fee:
- $95
Cost of additional/employee cards:
- $0
Current welcome bonus:
- Earn 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after you spend $15,000 on purchases in the first 3 months after you open a new card account (find out more)
Earnings:
The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card earns 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 spent in combined purchases in the following categories each anniversary year:
- Travel
- Shipping purchases
- Internet, cable, and phone services
- Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines
Cardholders earn 1 point per dollar on all other transactions and on all transactions above the $150,000 yearly maximum.
Key benefits:
- Primary auto rental cover
- Cell Phone protection
- No foreign transaction fees
- Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption insurance
- Purchase protection
- Extended warranty protection
- Roadside dispatch
- Transfer points to 11 airline partners and 3 hotel partners in a 1:1 ratio (details)
- Get 1.25 cents/point in value when you spend your points on travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal
Why this is a great card
The first thing you should know is the terms and conditions which Chase applies to the 100,000 point welcome bonus… so here they are:
To qualify and receive your bonus, you must make Purchases totaling $15,000 or more during the first 3 months from account opening. (“Purchases” do not include balance transfers, cash advances, travelers checks, foreign currency, money orders, wire transfers or similar cash-like transactions, lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, race track wagers or similar betting transactions, any checks that access your account, interest, unauthorized or fraudulent charges, and fees of any kind, including an annual fee, if applicable.) After qualifying, please allow 6 to 8 weeks for bonus points to post to your account. To be eligible for this bonus offer, account must be open and not in default at the time of fulfillment.
You’ll notice that there’s no wording in that paragraph that excludes the purchase of gift cards – that’s something that may be worth bearing in mind.
I value Chase Ultimate Rewards points at a conservative 1.5 cents each (based on the value I know that I can get out of them with ease) so, according to that valuation, the 100,000 points offered by the welcome bonus are worth $1,500.
If you think my valuation is too high, you’ll find it hard to argue against a 1.25 cents/point valuation as that’s the value you’ll get from the points when you book travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal, and at that level, the welcome bonus is worth $1,250.
Whichever way you look at it, that’s a pretty fantastic welcome bonus.
Outside of the fantastic welcome bonus, there are 5 major reasons I like this card:
The earning rates
With, travel, shipping, social media & search engine advertising, internet, cable, and phone services all earning 3 points per dollar with the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card (up to a spending limit of $150,000), this card is very well suited to a large number of SMEs where those categories often represent significant outgoings.
Assuming a valuation of 1.5 cents/point, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card effectively offers a return of 4.5% across a number of significant spending categories… and that’s impressive.
Yes, the $150,000 cap is going to be a little disappointing if you happen to be a high spender, but considering this card’s target audience, I don’t think that’s a particularly unreasonable cap to have in place.
Chase Ultimate Rewards
I’m a big fan of Chase Ultimate Rewards and I work very hard to keep my UR balance as healthy as possible. I use most of my points for transfers over to Hyatt from where I usually book some of the nicer hotels in the world, but a large number of the other transfer partners, including United Airlines & Singapore Airlines, all also offer great ways to us the points that the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card earns.
Cell phone protection
One of the nicer (and possibly more useful) benefits that come with the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card is the cell phone protection benefit which offers up to $500 per claim (for theft or damage) to phones listed on the monthly cell phone bill paid with the card.*
Even if you don’t need a lot of the card’s other benefits, at just $95 per year this card could be considered worth it for the cell phone protection alone.
*A claim can be made for up to $600 but as all claims are subject to a $100 excess, the net maximum claim is $500.
Primary auto rental cover
Unlike a lot of credit cards, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card offers cardholders primary auto rental cover as long as the rental company’s collision insurance is declined, the rental is for business purposes, and the entire rental cost is charged to the card.
Considering how many small businesses require their employees (and owners) to rent cars, this can be an incredibly useful benefit to have.
It makes some other Chase credit cards significantly better
The Chase Ink Business Cash® Credit Card (review), the Chase Freedom Flex℠ Credit Card (review), and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® Credit Card (review) are all fantastic credit cards in their own rights (take a look at the reviews to see what I mean) but they are made even better if you hold the Chase Ink Business Preferred® credit card.
These three cards are all cash back cards and they offer cardholders some of the best cash back rates available. However, when one or more of these cards is paired with the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, the points that these cards earn (and that are normally only convertible to cash back) can be converted to valuable Ultimate Rewards Points.
As an example, let’s take the excellent Chase Freedom Flex℠Credit Card which doesn’t charge an annual fee and earns cardholders the following:
-
- 5% cash back on up to $1,500 of spending in quarterly revolving categories.
- 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase’s travel portal.
- 3% cash back on dining (includes take-out and delivery)
- 3% cash back on spending at drugstores
- 1% cash back on spending in all other categories
A Freedom Flex card holder who also holds an Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card can either take the Flex Card’s earnings as cash back or can convert it into Ultimate Rewards Points (1% cash back = 1 Ultimate Rewards Point).
As I’ve already mentioned, I value Ultimate Rewards Points at 1.5 cents each so that would effectively mean that when paired with the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, Chase’s already excellent Freedom Flex Card would offer a return of between 1.5% and 7.5% across various spending categories – that’s a truly stunning rate of return to get from a card that doesn’t charge an annual fee.
I hold this credit card
I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk too, so the Ink Business Preferred Credit Card holds a very special place in my wallet.
Getting the card wasn’t plain sailing for me (I think that had something to do with the fact that I applied at the height of the pandemic when Chase was still in full-on panic mode and rejecting a large number of business card applications) but I finally struck gold in October last year when Chase was only too happy to issue me with the one card that I had been after for longer than any other.
I applied for the card at a point in the year when I knew that I had a lot of bills heading my way so it didn’t take me very long to trigger the welcome bonus…
…and those 100,000 points have already paid for a number of Hyatt stays that would otherwise have cost me a significant (painful!) sum of money so they’ve been put to good use.
The wonderful welcome bonus aside, it’s great having a card that gives me bonus points for my cell phone bills while giving me cellphone cover as well, and it’s nice to know that each time I rent a car for work I’ve got primary cover protecting my trip. Better still, now that I hold the Chase Ink Preferred Credit Card, I’ve been able to save money by downgrading my Chase Sapphire Reserve Card to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Credit Card (review) without having to give up the ability to earn 3 points/dollar on my travel spending… and that makes me love this card even more.
Bottom line
How much use you get out of the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card will depend on the nature of your business and the nature of your spending, but this is very obviously a card that a significant number of people would find useful.
If you (or your employees) travel a lot for the business, then this is definitely a card to be considering – the bonus points for travel spending and the primary auto coverage will make it a must-have card for a lot of SMEs – but it’s also a card to be considered by anyone who holds the Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited card if they want to be sure they’re maximizing their card’s earnings potential.
Overall, in an environment awash with business credit card options, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card is easily one of the better all-around options available today, so with the welcome bonus as high as it currently is, this could be a great time to add this card to your portfolio.
Click to find out how to apply for the Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
