Last Chance To Apply For An Ink Plus Card

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Chase will launch the new Ink Business Preferred card tomorrow which will offer 80K points for signing up and carry a $95 annual fee. It will offer 3 points per dollar on travel, telecom, shipping, and advertising on social media and search engines on up to $150K in annual spending.

With that launch Chase has confirmed that they will no longer offer the Ink Plus to new customers. Applications for it will likely disappear shortly. The Ink Plus offers a 60K signup bonus for spending $5K within 3 months. The new Ink card will have a generous signup bonus, but I strongly prefer the Ink Plus’ bonus categories.

Ink Plus has a $95 annual fee and offers 5 points per dollar on $50,000 of annual spending on telecom, TV, internet, and office supply stores. It offers 2 points per dollar on $50,000 of annual spending on gas and hotels.

The 5x office supply bonus is quite lucrative when used to purchase gift cards for stores like Amazon or generic Visa gift cards. You can even buy $300 Visa gift cards from Staples from the comfort of your home, which will earn 5 points per dollar and help meet the spending threshold.

The Ink Plus card has a $95 annual fee. There are no foreign exchange fees.

There is also an Ink Cash card with no annual fee that also offers 5 points per dollar, but caps it at $25,000 per year and charges foreign transaction fees. It may stick around longer than the Ink Plus, but my guess is that it will have a new reward structure put into place at some point. You may also want to apply for an Ink Cash card if you want to lock in 5 points per dollar without an annual fee.

Applying for a business card and the benefits of business card spending:

The Ink cards are business cards. But you may be already running a business that qualifies for a business card and there are several huge advantages that business cards have over consumer cards as you can read here.

The Ink cards are subject to 5/24, though getting an Ink card doesn’t count towards your 5/24 count as AMEX/Chase/Citi business cards don’t show up on your credit report.

If you’re like me and you run more than one business you can signup for multiple of the same card for each business to manage each businesses expenses separately.

For example if your name is Joe Smith and you sell items online, or if you have any other side business and want a credit card to better keep track of business expenditures you can just open a business credit card for “Joe Smith Sole Proprietorship” as the business name. You don’t need to file any messy government paperwork to be allowed to do that.
Just be sure to select “Sole Proprietorship” as the business type and just use your social security number in the Tax Identification Number field as well as in the social security number field.

A great thing about these business cards is that they don’t report your spending on your personal credit report.

On personal cards if you spend money on your card your credit score will be hurt even if you pay your bill on time. A whopping 30% of your credit score is based on credit utilization. You can pay off your card before your statement is generated to avoid that, but that takes effort and laying out money well before you have to. Additionally it’s good to have the statement close with a few dollars to show the card is active and being paid every month.

On a business card it’s just not reported, so you can wait until the money is due without it having a negative effect on your score. Plus if you close a business card it won’t ever have an effect on your score.

Cash back:

Ink cards can be registered for Visa Savings Edge.

With that program you earn cash back on top of points. For example you’ll earn 1% cash back at Chevron, and Texaco, 2% cash back at TigerDirect, 4% cash back at Alamo and National, 5% cash back at B%H Photo, Lenovo, and several hotel brands.

Bonus points:

Ink cards offer 5 points per dollar on internet/cable service and telecom purchases, so that’s a nice rebate when you purchase a new cell phone and off your cable bill.

They also earn 5 points per dollar at office supply stores. There are hundreds of gift cards sold by office supply stores.

-Upgrading to an iPhone or Galaxy billed to your cell phone account? 5 points per dollar.
-Buying gift cards for gas? 5 points per dollar plus you’ll pay the lower cash rates at the pump.
-Buying gift cards for Amazon, eBay, Gap, Groupon, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Marshalls, Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, StubHub, TJMaxx, etc? 5 points per dollar.

The Ink Plus card caps those bonuses to $50K of purchases per year while the Ink Cash card caps those bonuses to $25K of purchases per year.

The Ink Plus card also offers 2 points per dollar on gas and hotels while the Ink Cash card offers 2 points per dollar on gas and dining.

Gift card uses:

Your local school or other charity will be more than happy to accept donations of Amazon gift cards for supplies or any other useful gift cards for chinese auctions, raffles, fundraisers, etc.

They will give you a tax deductible receipt for the full face value-the price you paid for the gift cards. And at the same time you’ll earn 5 points per dollar. So while doing good you can still get a nice chunk of points and you’ll save on your taxes.

Or you can use Visa gift cards for everyday spending thereby getting 5 points per dollar on everything you buy anywhere via the Visa gift cards.

Point Currency:

Chase Ultimate Rewards offer instant and fee-free transfers to top-notch mileage and points programs at a 1:1 ratio.

If you have a Sapphire Reserve card you can transfer points there for 1.5 cents per point fixed value on travel.

Or you can transfer points into miles.

Transfer partners include:
–United (Star Alliance) is an excellent currency. They never charge fuel surcharges, have very flexible routing rules, they allow one-way awards for half the mileage, they have short-haul awards for 10,000 miles, they often run discounted award promotions, they allow for a stopover and an open-jaw so that you can really maximize a single award ticket into several free trips, and they have dozens of partners to fly on, most of which can be booked on their website.
–British Airways (OneWorld) is awesome for short-haul awards, though partner American has been stingy with award space of late. Awards start from just 4.5K miles. Flights to Israel on Air Berlin are just 60,000 miles round-trip with no fuel surcharges. They allow one-way awards for half the mileage. There are no close-in or expedite fees. You can cancel an award for as little as $5.60. Infants are only charged 10% of the miles on international trips instead of 10% of the full fare like US carriers charge. Plus they don’t collect fuel surcharges on American within the western hemisphere, on Qantas from or within Australia, on Air Berlin, Aer Lingus, Alaska, or LAN and you can transfer points to Iberia to limit fuel surcharges there as well.
You can read more in this post on everything you need to know about BA Avios. And you can see 110 places you can go to nonstop from NYC with Avios.
–Korean (Skyteam) offers unbeatable first class availability (A380 First Class Trip Report here) and they also have true bargains on partner travel, just 30,000 miles to fly round-trip on Hawaiian or Alaska to Hawaii in coach or 60,000 miles in first. And it’s just 20,000 miles to fly to Alaska in coach or 40,000 miles in first. You can even get a free stopover on the way to or in Alaska! If there is Delta saver award space you can fly to Hawaii round-trip for just 25,000 miles in coach or 45,000 miles in business.
–Air France/KLM Flying Blue (Skyteam) offers promo awards from rotating North American cities to Europe, Israel, and Russia from just 12,500 miles each way. Regular awards to Israel are just 25K miles each way, though some fuel surcharges apply on most airlines except for Delta.
–Singapore (Star Alliance) offers private walled-in first class suites that can only be booked with their miles. A suite one-way from JFK to Europe is 57,375 miles. Travel to the US48, Hawaii, Alaska, Europe, and Israel can all be had on the cheap. There are no close-in booking fees and changes and cancellations are very cheap. Fuel surcharges apply when flying on most airlines besides United. More info here.
–Southwest offers a value of about 1.7 cents per point towards award travel, though that rate can now vary. Plus you get 2 free checked bags, free flight changes or flight cancellations. and you can even get a point refund if the price of your flight goes down.
–Virgin Atlantic has some niche uses with awards on Delta and often has sales for discounted awards to London.
–Hyatt is a very powerful hotel currency. They have a cash and points option that offers some excellent values and more importantly those stays earn points, elite stay credits, promo credits, and you can use suite upgrades on cash and point stays as well. It remains far less expensive for high-end hotel stays than any other hotel program.
You can also funnel points through Hyatt to Southwest to qualify for a free Southwest Companion Pass which gives you a free companion every time you pay for or redeem for a free ticket.
-You can also transfer points to Marriott, Ritz Carlton, and IHG.

Will you be applying for an Ink Plus card before it’s discontinued?