If you have a for-profit venture — even if it doesn’t account for a meaningful portion of your total income — you should think about using the Ink Business Preferred® Card as your primary credit card. It earns points fast, and its sign-up bonus is best-in-class.
If you prefer travel rewards over cash back, this card is a must. You can transfer points to useful travel partners like Southwest, United Airlines, Hyatt, and more. You’ll be surprised at how far the card can take you toward your next vacation.
Key Features
- Intro offer: Earn 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after spending $15,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening
- Point transfers: Convert credit card rewards points to points with other valuable airline and hotel partners
- Insurance: Rental car insurance (when renting for business purposes), as well as cell phone protection
- Earn rates: 3 points per $1 spent on common business expenses; 1 point per $1 on everything else
- Annual fee: $95
- Other perks: No foreign transaction fees
In-Depth Analysis
Welcome Offer
This card comes with the best Chase credit card sign-up bonus available. You’ll earn 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after making $15,000 in purchases within the first three months of opening an Ink Business Preferred card account.
100,000 Chase points is a lot. Chase Ultimate Rewards points are arguably the most valuable travel rewards currency in existence (I’ll show you how to use them in a second), so any chance to scoop up a bounty of this size is a no-brainer.
That said, the high spending requirement might be a tough ask for some smaller businesses unless you know you have big expenses coming up. You can also elect to prepay for big-ticket items like insurance and rent in order to make the minimum spend requirement.
Read more: Can You Pay Rent with a Credit Card?
Earning Rewards
Apart from the excellent bonus, you’ll also receive 3 points per dollar (on up to $150,000 in combined purchases annually, then 1 point per dollar) for the following:
- Shipping purchases
- Advertising purchases on social media sites and search engines
- Internet, cable, and phone services
- Travel
You’ll earn 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases you make.
Redeeming Rewards
There are loads of ways you can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points — but they don’t all offer the same redemption value for your points.
The last redemption route you should consider is cashing out your points for a value of 1 cent each. That makes this 100,000-point bonus worth $1,000 in cash. Certainly not bad, but you can do a whole lot better.
Alternatively, you can book travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal and receive a value of 1.25 cents per point. That makes the card’s 100,000-point bonus worth $1,250. But you can do even better than that.
With the Ink Business Preferred, you can transfer your points to a handful of extremely valuable airline and hotel partners, such as Hyatt, United Airlines, British Airways, and more. This is where the real value lives.
For example, I recently transferred 85,000 points to British Airways and booked a lie-flat business class seat to the Maldives on Qatar Airways. This one-way flight retails for $6,000! That amounts to a redemption value of 7 cents per point — instead of just 1.25 cents per point through the Chase Travel Portal.
As another example, you can transfer 80,000 Chase points to Hyatt for a weekend stay at a five-star hotel like the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, which routinely sells for $1,000+ per night. Using your points in this way means you should get a value around 2.5 cents per point. That’s still twice as high as if you had used your points to book the same stay through the Chase Travel Portal at a rate of 1.25 cents each.
Insurance
The Ink Business Preferred comes with some extremely helpful types of insurance. Highlights include:
Rental car insurance — If you waive the car rental’s CDW (collision damage waiver) and pay for the rental with this card, it’ll cover you for theft or damage to the car. You don’t even have to tell your personal auto insurance about the incident. This can save you a good $15+ per day over ponying up for the rental agency’s in-house rental insurance. Just note that you must be renting the car for “business purposes.”
Trip delay insurance — If your flight is delayed by 12 hours or more — or if you’re delayed overnight — your card will cover up to $500 in reasonable expenses, such as food, lodging, toiletries, etc. To get this benefit, you must pay for your flight with the card.
Cellphone insurance — When you pay your monthly phone bill with this card, you’ll get up to $1,000 per claim for theft or damage. If you pay your employees’ phone bills, they’re covered too. You can make up to three claims per year, but you’ll have to pay a $100 deductible.
The card also comes with extended warranty protection, purchase protection, and trip cancellation and interruption insurance — but they’re pretty bog-standard and not features that differentiate the Ink Business Preferred from other cards.
Fees and Interest Rates
This card has a $95 annual fee. That’s well worth it if you’ll use the card’s main benefits regularly. And considering you can get 100,000 bonus points for opening the card and meeting its minimum spend requirement, it’s definitely worth a test-drive.
Even if you find that it doesn’t jive with your lifestyle, you can simply cancel it a year after you open it. If you were to cash out your welcome offer points at 1 cent each, you’d still be $905 in the black after accounting for the first year’s annual fee.
Other Benefits
Some credit cards have an extremely annoying fee that charges you whenever you use your card abroad. You may even be charged if you use your card inside the US if the online merchant you’re buying from is international and doesn’t offer USD payments.
It’s called a foreign transaction fee, and it’s generally between 2% and 3% of a purchase made in foreign currency. The Ink Business Preferred waives that ridiculous fee, so it’s a great card to bring along if you’re overseas.
Another card feature (which you’ll hopefully never use) is the travel and emergency assistance. If you’ve got an emergency during your travels, a benefits administrator will help you work it out — though you’ll have to pay for any actual services. You’ll also receive a roadside dispatch service if you ever need a jumpstart, a changed tire, a tow, etc. You’ll still have to pay, but it’s a good feature to have if you’re desperate.
