Consumers Are Freaking Out About the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Here’s Why Small Business Owners Should, Too

The enticingly heavy, sleek blue-and-black Chase Sapphire Reserve was all the hype among credit card fanatics when it was announced in August 2016.

Credit card forums exploded, with consumers anxiously waiting for application links. Bloomberg Businessweek put the card on the cover of its September 2016 issue.

And the card was a big deal: The signup bonus of 100,000 Ultimate Rewards Points was worth $1,500 of travel towards pretty much any flight or hotel. And if you redeemed your Ultimate Rewards Points through United airfare, you’d be seeing a value of almost $2,400.

Even though Chase recently halved the signup bonus to 50,000 points when you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months, the Chase Sapphire Reserve is still one of the best options for small businesses despite its $450 annual fee.

Yes, it’s not a business credit card. But using the Chase Sapphire Reserve in conjunction with your Chase business credit card might be a smart move for your business.

Here’s why.

Transfer Ultimate Reward Points Between Your Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Business Credit Cards

One of the major perks of having both a Chase consumer credit card and a Chase business credit card is that Chase lets you combine your Ultimate Rewards Points across multiple Chase cards.

So, say you have Chase Sapphire Reserve as a consumer credit card and you have Chase’s Ink Plus Business Credit Card for your business. You’ll accrue Ultimate Rewards Points separately on each account, but you can combine your points from your Chase Ink Plus with your rewards balance on your Chase Sapphire Reserve.

And if you want to get really savvy with how you redeem your Ultimate Rewards Points, you can transfer the points you earn on your Chase business credit card to your Chase Sapphire Reserve account and redeem the Ultimate Rewards Points at a much better value.

Ultimate Rewards Points redeemed specifically on your Reserve account come in at a value of at least 1.5 cents (more like 2.1 cents if you can redeem them with United Airlines and Hyatt). Just redeeming your points on travel from your Cash Ink Plus, on the other hand, comes at a value of only 1.25 cents.

What makes pairing the Chase Sapphire Reserve with your Chase business credit card worth it is the ability to combine Ultimate Rewards Points and redeem them on the most valuable account—your Chase Sapphire Reserve. By combining points, you’ll be able to save that much more on your business travel.

How to Transfer Your Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

If you want to transfer the Ultimate Rewards Points you earn with your Chase credit cards, it’s pretty easy to do so—it just takes a few steps.

First, make sure you have online access to your Chase accounts before you bring the transfer.

Once you’re logged in, here’s how to transfer Ultimate Rewards Points between accounts:

1. From the homepage, navigate to “Go to Ultimate Rewards.”
2. If you have more than one account, click on the account you want to transfer your Ultimate Rewards Points from. (If you only have one account, you’ll automatically transfer your points from this account.)
3. You’ll be brought to the card’s homepage. From here, click on “Combine Points” at the bottom of the menu.
4. Assuming that you want to transfer points between two Chase accounts that you own (you can transfer points between accounts that you and someone else owns, too), start off by choosing the account you want to transfer from—in this case, a Chase business credit card. Then select the card you want to transfer to—the Chase Sapphire Reserve.
5. Next, choose how many points you want to transfer—either a portion of your balance or all your points in your account.
6. Press submit, and you’re ready to go!

Chase makes transferring Ultimate Rewards Points extremely easy.

2 Other Reasons to Use a Chase Sapphire Reserve for Your Business

The ability to transfer Ultimate Rewards Points from a participating Chase business credit card—the Ink Cash Business Credit Card or the Ink Plus Business Credit Card—is the number one reason why business owners should take out this consumer credit card.

But there are a couple of other reasons why your business will benefit from using this card.

Travel in Style for your Business

Not only does the Chase Sapphire Reserve come with a great points rewards rate on travel purchases, it also provides a slew of travel perks that you can take advantage of on your business travel.

With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you’ll have a $100 application fee credit for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry—meaning the domestic or international business traveler can avoid time-consuming airport lines.

With the complimentary Priority Pass membership, you also have access to over 900 airport lounges worldwide, making layovers much easier to stomach.

These are just a couple of the travel perks that make the Chase Sapphire Reserve a great card for business travelers.

It’s an Affordable Option to Comparable Business Credit Cards

The $450 annual fee is steep, and might make you shy away from using this card in conjunction with your other Chase business credit card.  

But when you compare it to other travel business credit cards, you’ll quickly notice that it’s the same annual fee as the American Express Platinum’s.

However, when you add up the perks, the Chase Sapphire Reserve looks more and more cost-effective—particularly when compared to mid-range travel cards.

We mentioned the Priority Pass membership, the Global Entry, and TSA PreCheck reimbursement.

On top of that, you get an annual $300 statement credit that you can apply towards any charge categorized as travel, including airfare, bag fees, hotels, and taxis.

Add these all up, and you’re looking at almost more than the $450 annual fee. That’s not even including the value of the 50,000 Ultimate Rewards Points signup bonus and rewards rate.

The Bottom Line

If you’re a savvy credit card user—or someone who gets excited about earning a ton of bonus points and redeeming them at high value—then you’ll get enormous value out of using both a Chase Sapphire Reserve and a Chase business credit card.

If you don’t have a Chase business credit card to make this happen, the time to find one is now!

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from Fundera Ledger https://www.fundera.com/blog/chase-sapphire-reserve