There’s no doubt that the Chase Sapphire Reserve card has been dropping in popularity since its debut in 2016. It’s not that the card isn’t good anymore, but rather other card issuers have beefed up their benefits. Over the past two years we’ve seen card issuers add 3X, 4X and even 5X points categories to their cards while offering ever more valuable annual credits. The result is that there is more competition in the domestic credit card market than ever.
With the significant improvement in benefits from Chase Sapphire Reserve competitors I’ve been waiting to see Chase’s response. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chase completely overhaul the Sapphire lineup of cards by 2020. However, for now it seems Chase has taken a small step forward in making its Sapphire lineup of credit cards a little more valuable.
Chase Introduces Chase Offers
Recently, Chase announced a new Sapphire card benefit simply called Chase Offers. Chase Offers are essentially coupons that card holders can add to their card to make their cards a little more rewarding. For those familiar with the American Express Offers program, Chase Offers is essentially identical. Chase introduced this benefit by email a few weeks ago.
The email opened by explaining how the new Chase Offers benefit works. To begin, log-in to your Chase Sapphire account and visit the Chase Offers page. You can also access Chase Offers from the Chase Banking Mobile App.
Next, browsing the current listing of offers and add each appealing offer to your card.
Finally, after adding offers to your card use your card at participating merchants to receive the benefit.
Above is a quick screenshot of the offers available to me which have been added to my card. As you can tell, most of them are food related and offer fairly generous savings.
How Chase Offers Affect My Credit Card Strategy
Chase Offers makes things happening in my Wallet a bit interesting. Since October the new American Express Gold card has been my go-to card for dining purchases. After all, the Gold card offers 4X points on dining while the Sapphire Reserve only offers 3X. However, with Chase Offers it may make sense to use my Chase Sapphire Reserve card over the Gold card at select merchants.
Let’s take for example a $20 purchase at Panera Bread. With Chase Offers I’ll receive 15% off my purchase. So my total purchase is now just $17 and I’ve saved $3. Additionally, I’ll earn 3X points on the $17 purchase for a total of 51 points. I value Chase Ultimate Rewards Points at $0.015/each, so the 51 points are worth about $0.77. In total, by using the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, I’ll get $3.77 back on my $20 Panera purchase.
If instead I used my American Express Gold card I’d earn 4X points on the full $20 purchase for a total of 80 Membership Rewards points. I again value MR points at about $0.015 each so if I use my Gold card I’d only get $1.20 back from my purchase.
In the above scenario it’s clearly more beneficial to use the Chase Sapphire Reserve card over the Gold card. However, if I didn’t add the offer to my card, I had already used the offer, or if the offer expired clearly the Gold card is the better bet.
Final Thoughts
So, bottom line is that my strategy remains mostly the same. For most of my dining purchases I will continue to use my Amex Gold card, but to the extend that I have an offer from Chase I’ll use the Sapphire Reserve card. The only effect that this has on my strategy is that I now have to check two mobile apps for offers weekly!
Overall, I’m happy to see Chase add the Chase Offers program to their Sapphire Cards. Chase Offers alone wouldn’t convince me to open a card, nor would they convince me to keep one open that I’ve been wanting to close, but it is simply a nice and new benefit added to a card lineup which hasn’t seen many changes over the past few years.
Mostly, I’ll be interested to see how Chase Offers evolve over time. For now most of the offers are for 10%-15% back on dining purchases of any amount. In the future I wonder if Chase will add $50 or more back on larger purchases similar to those offers provided by Amex.
