After opening a credit card and earning a massive sign-up bonus it’s often difficult to earn large sums of points. Once you earn the initial sign-up bonus, most future points come from annual spending. Occasionally you can request a retention offer from a card issuer, but those offers seem to shrink year after year. Overall it’s hard to earn tens of thousands of points beyond the initial sign-up bonus.
Chase Refer-A-Friend Program
The goods news for Chase card holders is that Chase offers a refer-a-friend program with many of their cards. Chase’s refer friends program works exactly as you’d expect it to. Existing card holders send referral links to their friends or anyone else interested in the card. When the person you refer applies and is approved for each card, the referring card holders receives a bonus.
Bonuses vary based on each card and some Chase cards currently aren’t offering referrals. Currently I carry the Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Freedom, Marriott Rewards Premier, and United MileagePlus Explorer cards. The current referral bonus for those cards are as follows:
- Chase Sapphire Reserve: Offering 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points per approved referral, up to 50,000 points each year.
- Chase Freedom: Offering $100.00 cash back per approved referral, up to $500 each year.
- Marriott Rewards Premier Card From Chase: Marriott currently offers 20,000 Marriott Rewards points per approved referral, up to 100,000 points each year.
- United MileagePlus Explorer Card From Chase: No referral offer currently available.
As you can see you shouldn’t overlook these current referral offers. With my current portfolio of credit cards if I complete 15 referrals each year I’d earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points AND 100,000 Marriott points. That’s enough points to take a very nice trip each year for essentially free.
While I don’t recommend annoying your friends repeatedly with offers, it’s definitely worth providing them a referral link if they’re already considering one of these cards.
Referrals Now Available Through The Chase Mobile App
Until the most recent update of the Chase Mobile app, Chase only offered card referrals through their website. To refer a friend, card holders had to log-in to the Chase website and find the refer-a-friend webpage. Here’s a link to the Chase Refer-A-Friend website. Once on the site, you have to enter your last name, zip code, and the last for digits of your card. Once entered card holders reach a referral page with a link to send to friends or an email entry field to enter friend’s email addresses. Unfortunately, as I tried to find this next step I reached a “generic error” page.
One of the things I liked about this method is that it gave you the option to tweet or share directly to Facebook your referral code. However, I didn’t like that my only option to send the referral to friends was via email. I didn’t like the idea of my referral links ended up in a friend’s spam inbox.
Chase Refer A Friend Via The Mobile App
Luckily with the most recent update to the Chase Mobile App, card holders can now refer friends directly from the app. The process is extremely easy as well. Card holders simply need to log-in to the app and then click on the three dots next to the pay card option on the place card for each account. When you click the three dots you’ll find options to “see statements,” “redeem rewards,” or “Refer Friends.” The last option is the one we’re most interested in.
After clicking the refer friends option you’ll reach a landing page which explains the current refer a friend offer. At the bottom of the available offer are two buttons. The first says “Send An Email” which requests your friend’s name and valid email address. Using this method, your friend should receive an email within the next 7 days.
The other option simply says “Invite Now.” Using the “invite now” method you’ll receive a drafted text message with a link explaining the referral offer to your friends. Once the app generates the message you can easily choose anyone with a phone number to send the offer to. I love this offer because of how easy it is to send the offer to several of your friends in a single sitting.
Final Thoughts
It always pains me when I explain the benefits of a card to a friend or family member only to find they opened the card without using a referral link. There’s no reason to not use a referral offer considering the friend gets the same great publicly available sign-up bonus and the referer also receives a bonus. It’s a win-win situation.
With the new update to the Chase mobile app this process is even simpler. I love that I can now easily send a friend a text with a sign-up link if they’re interested in a card. In the past I’d explain a card to someone and then have to find a desktop to send a referral link. Now I can complete the referral process in person on my mobile phone. I hope now that the process is simplified for card holders that I’ll earn even more points in the coming months!
(H/T OneMileAtATime for initially reporting this change)
Featured Image Courtesy of Chase
