Who’s eligible for the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus?

If you’ve been thinking about applying for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card — and even if you haven’t, you’ll want to hear this — now’s a good time to do so because you can currently earn 75,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first three months of account opening.

TPG values Chase Ultimate Rewards points at 2.05 cents each, which means this bonus is worth an impressive $1,538— and potentially more, depending on how you redeem those Ultimate Rewards points.

Before you submit an application, though, you should make sure you’re eligible for this offer. Here’s a quick rundown of the eligibility requirements and restrictions for the Chase Sapphire Preferred welcome bonus.

Who’s eligible to apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred?

This is what Chase states on its website regarding Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus eligibility:

The product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card who received a new cardmember bonus within the last 48 months. If you are an existing Sapphire customer and would like this product, please call the number on the back of your card to see if you are eligible for a product change. You will not receive the new cardmember bonus if you change products.

If you’ve never held a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve®, you’re in the clear to apply for the card and work toward meeting the minimum spend requirement to earn the welcome bonus. However, things get a little more complicated if you currently have the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve — or if you’ve had one in the past.

Chase has a 48-month rule for customers to receive new cardmember bonuses within the Chase Sapphire card family.

If you’ve earned a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve sign-up bonus in the past four years, you’re out of luck to earn this bonus until you’ve passed the 48-month mark since the last bonus. And keep in mind that the 48-month rule applies to when you received the bonus, not when you applied for the card.

Additionally, you can only have one Sapphire credit card open at a time, which means those who are current cardmembers of the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve or the no-annual-fee Chase Sapphire Card (no longer open to new applications) cannot apply for this card or receive the bonus.

The information for the Chase Sapphire credit card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Related: What credit score do you need to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred card?

Chase’s 5/24 rule

Something else to consider when thinking about whether to apply for the Sapphire Preferred is Chase’s 5/24 rule.

Even if you meet the above requirements to be eligible for this bonus, you’ll still need to fall under Chase’s infamous — though unpublished — 5/24 rule.

If you’ve opened five or more new personal credit card accounts (including authorized user accounts and some business accounts) across all issuers in the past two years, Chase is almost certainly going to deny your application.

You can try calling Chase to see if they’re willing to not hold authorized user accounts against your maximum of five new accounts in the last two years if you get denied for a new Chase card, but note that this doesn’t mean you’ll get an automatic approval.

Related: How to calculate your 5/24 standing

Moving around credit lines

There’s one final note regarding Sapphire Preferred applications. If you currently have multiple Chase credit cards with large credit limits, there’s a chance you’ve hit the maximum (total) amount of money that the issuer is willing to loan you.

If this happens, you most likely won’t be rejected for the card when you apply. Instead, your application will go into “pending” status.

You could wait for Chase to make a decision, but you might be better off calling the reconsideration line. You could proactively offer to move credit lines from an existing card to the Sapphire Preferred, which can help the agent push your application through.

Bottom line

The current Chase Sapphire Preferred sign-up bonus of 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards is valuable, so those who are eligible should consider applying.

Even if you know you’ll eventually want to upgrade to the Chase Sapphire Reserve (which also currently has a sign-up bonus of 75,000 points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months of account opening), it makes a lot of sense to sign up for the Sapphire Preferred now and then upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve after a year of card membership if you want the latter’s additional perks.

Read our full review of the Chase Sapphire Preferred to learn more.

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Apply here: Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

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