If you’re shopping for a business credit card, you’ve likely come across the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card. While we don’t think it’s as good of a choice as dash.fi, particularly for online advertising purchases, it has a set of useful features many business owners are interested in. Here’s a close look at the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card and how it compares to dash.fi.
Chase Ink Business Preferred Card Overview
Key Features
The Chase Ink Business Preferred Card is the premier travel rewards card from Chase’s line of business credit cards. The card requires a $95 annual fee and offers rewards in the form of Chase Ultimate Reward points, which are redeemable for travel, cash back, and other awards.
For regular purchase activity, cardholders earn 3x points per dollar on shipping purchases, advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines, internet, cable, and phone services, and travel. This rate is valid for the first $150,000 in annual purchases combined across the 3x bonus categories. Then, you get the standard 1x rate.
Points are worth 1.25 cents each when redeemed for travel in the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal. You can also transfer points to a list of supported travel rewards partners or redeem them for cash back. Your value per point varies when transferring to travel partners. You get one cent per point when redeeming for cash back. Other redemption options, like product purchases and gift cards, are usually not worthwhile for your rewards points.
Credit Card Benefits
In addition to rewards points, cardholders have access to a suite of additional protections for purchases and travel reservations paid for with the card. Coverages from this card include:
Trip Cancellation and Interruption Insurance: This coverage offers up to $5,000 per person and $10,000 per trip when canceled or cut short due to sickness, severe weather, or other covered reasons. This can help you from losing out on non-refundable fees paid to hotels, airlines, cruise lines, and tour operators.
Roadside Dispatch: Save on the cost of AAA or other roadside assistance coverage, as this card includes it for free. While you’ll have to pay for any services rendered, it may end up being quite a bit cheaper than paying for a subscription you may not use.
Rental Car Insurance: Rental car companies often charge $10 to $20 per day for their comprehensive coverage plans. An auto rental collision damage waiver is included when you use this card to pay. Coverage is primary when renting for a business trip or other business purposes.
Cell Phone Protection: Small business owners can skip the expensive cell phone insurance from Verizon, AT&T, and other phone companies when they pay for their cell phone bills with this card. If your phone is damaged and needs a repair or stolen, you’re covered up to $1,000 after a $100 deductible. Coverage includes up to three claims per 12 month period. If you were paying $7 per month per phone, this coverage offers savings of $168 per year.
Extended Warranty Protection: This feature gives you an additional year of warranty coverage from eligible products with a warranty of three years or less. If your product fails in the year after the manufacturer’s warranty period expires, this insurance gives you comparable benefits for a repair or replacement.
No Foreign Transaction Fees: Foreign transaction charges are often up to around 2% to 3% of the purchase value. Ink Business Preferred has no foreign transaction fees.
These benefits are on-par with other cards requiring an annual fee of around $100 per year. While it would be nice to see additional benefits, notably purchase protection, the most important benefits for business owners are covered with a reasonable annual fee.
Chase Ink Business Preferred Rewards Program
When you sign up for a business credit card, you should expect to receive some type of reward for every purchase. For example, dash.fi offers up to 3% cash back on purchases. How does Chase Ink Business Preferred compare?
New card users can start by earning 100,000 bonus points after spending at least $15,000 on standard purchases in the first three months after opening a new account. That’s worth $1,250 when redeeming for travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards website or $1,000 in cash back.
For regular purchases, you’ll get 1x point per dollar, the equivalent of 1% cash back or 1.25 cents in travel rewards. You can earn 3x for purchases in these categories, up to $150,000 per year in purchases. After reaching that limit, you’ll drop to the standard 1x rate for the rest of the year.
Shipping purchases
Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines
Internet, cable, and phone services
Travel
Small businesses spending less than $150,000 per year on these categories will likely find a good deal here. However, the $150,000 limit is extremely low for some larger businesses. Among dash.fi clients, we regularly find companies spending more than $150,000 in a single week during large campaigns. When that happens with the Chase Ink Business Preferred card, benefits drop far below the exciting, advertised rate that may have drawn you in.
While Chase’s rewards program is one of the best around, going head to head with American Express Ultimate Rewards, earning 1x on all purchases after hitting the limit on bonus purchases is far from ideal.
Pros and Cons of the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card
Pros
100,000 point bonus after signing up for a new card and meeting minimum purchase requirements
Earn up to 3X on popular business categories
Includes rental car and cell phone coverage
Cons
$95 annual fee
3x rewards limited to $150,000 in annual purchases
Rewards can be complicated to redeem for the best value
Is Chase Ink business Preferred worth it?
For many small businesses, the Chase Ink Business Preferred credit card is a good choice. The combination of benefits and features makes it a lucrative card with a wide range of protections. Particularly when you consider the signup bonus, cell phone protection, and rental car insurance, it’s easy to see how you could get more than the $95 annual fee back in value when using the card regularly.
However, businesses that spend heavily in the bonus categories, shipping, advertising with social media sites and search engines, internet, cable, phone services, and travel, could find the annual rewards limit restrictive.
If most of your business spending is in the bonus categories and you spend less than $150,000 per year in those categories, you will likely come out ahead. However, due to the restrictions on earning 3x rewards, there may be better options for companies that spend heavily in those categories, for example. For example, businesses that spend $50,000 per month on digital advertising could find their rewards extremely limited when using the Chase Ink Business Preferred card.
Alternatives to the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card
If you’re not sure this is the card for you, we have some alternatives to Chase Ink Business Preferred you may want to consider:
dash.fi: dash.fi comes with a huge cash back benefit worth up to 3% on all digital advertising purchases with no limits. You can also redeem for other flexible rewards, including cryptocurrencies. There’s no annual fee for the dash.fi card.
Capital One Spark: Spark Cash Select and Spark Cash Plus come with 1.5% to 2% cash back on all purchases. Capital One also offers travel rewards cards for businesses paying up to 2x Miles per dollar. Cards range from no annual fee to $150 per year.
American Express Business Gold: The Business Gold Card from American Express offers up to 4x on your top spending categories but also has a $150,000 annual limit to that top bonus feature. It also requires a $250 annual fee.
Bottom Line
While Chase Ink Business Preferred is a card with a ton of value, limitations to rewards make it less than perfect for many businesses, particularly those that spend heavily on digital marketing through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, and other sites. If you find the card too limiting, check out the dash.fi card, with no limits on how much you can earn at 3% cash back. Learn more about the dash.fi card here.
