Grandfathered Chase Sapphire Reserve Cardholders, Here’s What Changing With The $300 Travel Credit, Don’t Forget To Spend Your 2024 Travel Credit Before Your December Statement Closes!

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The Chase Sapphire Reserve® card comes with a $300 annual travel credit.

If you applied for your Sapphire Reserve on or after 5/21/17, the annual travel credit is based on your cardmembership year. In other words if you opened a card on 3/1/24 and your statement closes on the 1st of the month, you will get a $300 credit for travel spending from 3/1/24 through 4/1/25 and it will reset annually on 4/1.

If you applied for your Sapphire Reserve before 5/21/17, the annual travel credit is based on the calendar year.

It’s important to remember that while AMEX uses a true calendar year, Chase’s calendar year credit ends once your December statement closes, so your calendar year can end anytime from 12/1 through 12/28. You can call Chase or go on Chase.com to push off your statement close date to as late as the 28th of every month (which would impute a statement due date of the 25th of every month).

However, this is the last year with a calendar year based system for grandfathered cardholders, as they will be migrated over to a cardmembership year based system.

Here are a few sample letters sent to grandfathered cardholders with various renewal dates:

In other words, if your statement closes on December 10th, you’ll need to finish your 2024 travel spending by that date.

From December 10th to December 30th, you can get credit for your 2025 travel spending as usual, but regardless of what you spend, you will get a statement credit on December 30th for any unused portion of the 2025 travel spending. In other words, if you don’t have any travel spending between December 10th to December 30th, you will get a $300 statement credit on December 30th. If you have $150 of travel spending between December 10th to December 30th, you will get a $150 statement credit for the spending and a $150 statement credit on December 30th. If you have $300 of travel spending between December 10th to December 30th, you will get a $300 statement credit for the spending and no statement credit on December 30th.

The wording is vague, but it appears that there will be no travel credit available from December 31st until your card renewal date in 2025. From your 2025 card renewal date until your 2026 card renewal date you will have the $300 travel credit available, as well as every subsequent cardmember year. You can call Chase to find out your renewal date.

Click here to view how much of your annual travel spend has already been credited. Click on “Your Dashboard” on top of the page. You can tell what month your credit renews from your dashboard:

Wondering where you can use your travel credit? These categories have been confirmed as working for automatic travel refunds. Just spent in any of these categories and you’ll get an automatic refund:

Air:

• Airline tickets from any airline
• Air Canada Gift Cards
• Alaska Airlines gift cards
• American Airlines gift cards
• Baggage fees from any airline
• Delta gift cards purchased from their desktop site only.
• Hawaiian Airlines gift cards.
• Online travel agencies (Including Expedia, Orbitz, and Priceline)
• Seat selection or upgrade fees for any airline
• Southwest gift cards
• Retail travel agencies
• Taxes on award tickets for any airline
• United Airlines TravelBank Cash

Dining:

• Uber Eats

Lodging:

• Airbnb
• Campgrounds
• Cruises
• Groupon Getaways
• Hotel stays
• Marriott gift cards
• Motel stays
• Norwegian Cruise Line gift cards
• Online travel agencies (Including Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Priceline)
• Timeshares
• Retail travel agencies

Theme Parks and activities:

• UndercoverTourist.com (Discounted Disney, Universal, Legoland, and SeaWorld tickets)

Transportation:

• Amtrak
• BART
• Bridge tolls
• Buses
• Car rentals
• Car2Go
• Eurostar
• Ferries
• Greyhound
• Jerusalem Light Rail
• Limos
• Long Island Railroad
• Lyft rides
• Megabus
• Metra Rail Chicago
• Muni/parking meters
• NJ Transit
• NYC MetroCard
• NYC Parking Meters
• Oyster card
• Parking apps
• Parking garages
• Prepaid EZPass tolls loaded with the one-time payment option online or over the phone. If the system auto-loads then it may not count as travel, though it usually does.
• Prepaid I-Pass tolls loaded via one-time payment
• Prepaid FasTrak tolls loaded via one-time payment
• Prepaid SunPass tolls loaded via one-time payment
• Prepaid Washington DOT Good to Go tolls loaded via one-time payment
• Postpaid 407ETR Toronto tolls
• Subway travel
• Taxis
• Tolls
• Trains
• Trenitalia
• Tunnel tolls
• Turo
• Uber add funds in Uber app (plus get 5% off).
• Uber gift cards only if they are bought from the MileagePlusX app for iOS or Android
• Uber rides
• Ventra Chicago
• Zipcar

Know of other charges that will trigger a credit? Hit the comments!