I’ve written about the Chase Freedom card several times over the past few years. It’s a card that I’ve carried for just over two years now, but don’t actually use all that often. Because I rarely use the card, I don’t actually get much value from it annually. However, I’ll most likely never close the card because it lacks an annual fee and comes with one benefit that I particularly love.
At face value the Chase Freedom is a 1% Cash Back credit card that lacks an annual fee. However, the card offers a unique benefit that makes it especially compelling to carry. That is, the Chase Freedom card earns up to 5% Cash Back on certain rotating bonus category purchases. The benefit is capped to the first $1,500 of qualifying spend quarterly, so if you maximize the benefit each quarter you’ll receive up to $75 of cash back.
However, if you carry a Chase Ultimate Rewards card, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can transfer your Cash Back into Ultimate Rewards points and earn up to 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points each quarter.
Activate The Chase Freedom 5% Cash Back Quarterly Bonus Category
The only key thing to remember with the Chase Freedom card is that you actually have to activate the 5% Cash Back Bonus each quarter. Thankfully Chase makes doing so incredibly easy, but the trick is that you just have to remember to do it.
The easiest way to activate the 5% Cash Back Quarterly bonus is to use the link provided in one of several reminder emails sent to cardholders each quarter. I just received my first of reminder a day ago, which also introduced this quarter’s bonus categories.
As you’ll notice from the header of the email, the Q4’19 Chase Freedom 5% Cash Back Quarterly Bonus includes purchases with PayPal, Chase Pay, and at Department Stores.
Toward the bottom of the email is an activation button that you can click to activate the benefit.
Toward the bottom of the email is another activation button. After you click either activation email you’ll reach a confirmation page that your 5% quarterly bonus is activated.
The activation page also further outlines some of the the terms & conditions of the quarterly bonus.
A Somewhat Surprising Quarterly Bonus From Chase
Over the past few years there hasn’t been much variation in the Chase Freedom 5% Cash Back quarterly bonus categories. For the most part, the categories each quarter have been roughly the same.
This year was a bit different than 2018, but mostly the same. The one thing you can certainly count on each year is that Q4 will include department stores for the holidays. Also, for the past two years, Chase has included Chase Pay as an eligible bonus category.
This wasn’t much of a surprise last year, but I guess I find it to be a surprise this year. It’s surprising because Chase plans to scrap Chase pay in early 2020. I find it surprising that Chase is promoting Chase Pay in the months leading up to its eventual demise. I’m surprise that Chase didn’t instead just include “mobile payments” using mobile wallets as has been done in the past.
Final Thoughts
If you have the Chase Freedom card it’s very important to activate the 5% Cash Back benefit each quarter. IF you fail to activate the benefit you will not earn the extra cash back from qualifying spending which means you could miss out on earning an additional $50 of cash back in Q4’19.
One thing to remember, Chase generously allows you to activate at anytime in the quarter until about 15 days prior to the quarter end. If you activate within the activation window Chase will award you any cash back you’ve earned throughout the quarter prior to activation. So, if you forget to activate the benefit today it’s nice to know that you have until mid-December to do so.
