Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Complete Guide

The first part of the application is about your business. If you already have a well-established business, then the answers should be straightforward. If you are just getting started with your business, below are examples of how to fill this out. These answers assume that you do not have any employees and you operate as a sole proprietorship (which is the most basic form of a business). Use your judgment to answer differently if the examples given don’t match your circumstances:

• Legal Name of Business: If you don’t already have a business name, I recommend using your own name as the business name.
• Business Name on Card: Again, this can be your own name if you don’t have a business name to use.
• Business Mailing Address: This can be your home address if you don’t have a separate business address.
• Type of business: Sole Proprietor
• Tax Identification Number: This can be your SSN, but I recommend creating an EIN for your business (you can get an EIN quickly and for free from the IRS here)
• Number of Employees: 0 ( if just you, or the number of employees you have)
• Annual Business Revenue: 0 (or project an amount based on expected revenue)
• Years in Business: (number of years you’ve been operating the business with or without revenue)
• General industry, Category, Specific type: Pick whichever categories are closest to your business. For example, an aspiring author, artist, or musician might choose: “Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation” and “Independent Artists, Writers, Performers.”

This part of the application is about you, personally:

• Your title as Authorizing Officer: “Owner”
• Total gross annual income: Include all of your income, not just business income. This can include household income.
• The rest should be self-explanatory

Keep records of your answers In some cases Chase will ask to speak with you before approving your application. In those cases, they are likely to ask some of the same questions (annual business revenue, number of years in business, total gross income, etc.). Ideally, you’ll answer the same as you did on the application.

Check Application Status After submitting your application, you can check the status by calling the automated status line: (888) 338-2586

If you or another household member has a premium or ultra-premium Ultimate Rewards card, it is easy to get better than 1 cent per point value when redeeming points for travel.  The trick is to move the points from your no-fee Ultimate Rewards card to the premium card before using points to buy travel.  Chase allows you to freely move points to another card you own or to a card owned by a household member or business partner.  They call this “combining points”. Our comprehensive Chase Ultimate Rewards Guide will help you through this.

Redeem points for travel: 1.5 cents per point

This option requires that someone in your household has the ultra-premium Chase Sapphire Reserve card.  First move (combine) points from your no-fee card to the Sapphire Reserve account. Next, log into Chase under the Sapphire Reserve account, and go to the Chase Travel℠ portal to book your travel.  A $500 flight would usually cost 50,000 points if you used points attached to the no-fee card, but with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, it would cost only 33,333 points.

Redeem points for travel: 1.25 cents per point

This option requires that someone in your household has a premium Ultimate Rewards card: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Credit Card or Chase Ink Business Preferred.  First move (combine) points from your no-fee card to one of these premium cards. Next, log into Chase under the account that now has the points, and go to the Chase Travel Portal to book your travel.  A $500 flight would usually cost 50,000 points if you used points attached to a no-fee Ultimate Rewards card, but with the Chase Sapphire Preferred it would cost only 40,000 points.

Details about booking travel through Chase

You can use the Chase Travel Portal to book airfare, hotels, cruises, activities, and car rentals. Airfare purchased through the portal still earns airline miles and elite qualifying miles. Book your flights at a cheap price with Chase Ultimate Rewards. Hotels booked this way do not earn hotel rewards.  Worse, hotels booked through the portal often won’t offer you elite benefits even if you have status. Unfortunately, Chase switched to an Expedia-backed portal and removed some ultra-low-cost carriers. For example, you can no longer book Spirit Airlines or Southwest through Chase Ultimate Rewards.  There is a work-around for some carriers though.

Travel protections apply

When you pay with points for travel, Chase’s automatic travel protections do apply.  So, you can be covered for things like car rentals, trip delays, trip cancellation & interruption, lost luggage, etc.  The coverage you receive will be based on which card’s rewards were used to book the trip. For example, if you have both a Chase Sapphire Preferred and a Sapphire Reserve, you would want to move your Ultimate Rewards points from the Preferred to the Reserve and then use the Reserve points to book your trip. You will get both better value (1.5 cents per point) and better travel protection.

The best use of Ultimate Rewards points, in my opinion, is to transfer points to airline and hotel partners in order to book high-value awards.  Your best bet is usually to wait until you find a great flight or night award before transferring points. Points transfer at a ratio of 1:1 as shown in the list of transfer partners below. Keep in mind that while transfers are instantly posted to most loyalty programs, transfers to Singapore Krisflyer and Marriott Bonvoy are not instant.

You cannot transfer points directly from a no-fee Chase Ultimate Rewards card to airline and hotel partners, but you can move points first to a premium card (Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred, for example) or ultra-premium card (Sapphire Reserve) and then transfer the points to airline or hotel partners.  Points can be transferred to the loyalty accounts of the primary cardholder or any authorized user on the account. Points can also be transferred to the loyalty account of a joint business owner, but they do need to be an authorized user on the associated business account.

Through the Ultimate Rewards portal, you can redeem points for cash back, gift cards, merchandise, or experiences.  With this approach, you’ll usually get 1 cent per point value.  One exception is that Chase occasionally offers gift cards at a discount so you may be able to get better than 1 cent per point value during a gift card sale. You can also use points to pay some merchants directly (Amazon.com, for example, or via Chase Pay).  Don’t do this.  These options offer very poor value. Further, they may compromise the security of your account (i.e. if someone gets into your Amazon account, they might spend your Ultimate Rewards points – causing you a headache in getting your points reinstated).

If you are the primary account holder with multiple cards, you can freely combine Ultimate Rewards back and forth between your accounts.  Your points can then be redeemed according to the card to which you move them.  For example, if you have earn points on the no-fee Ink Business Cash card and have the ultra-premium Sapphire Reserve card, you can move those points from your Ink Cash to your Sapphire Reserve account to redeem them for 1.5 cents per point towards travel. If you intend to cancel a Chase Ultimate Rewards card, you should first combine your points with a card you intend to keep active. Once you cancel, you will forfeit any unused points in that account. A product change should not affect your balance, but some people prefer moving points before a product change as well just to be safe.

Chase allows customers to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to any other account in that customer’s name or to one additional household member or joint business owner (for free).

Why this is valuable:

You earn points with the card offering the best return on purchases and then use points with the card offering the best redemption rate.

• Only one member of your household needs to maintain a premium card for transferring to partners or booking travel (though note that the primary cardholder can only transfer points to partner loyalty programs in the name of the primary cardholder or authorized users).

Transfer difficulties? Create a loop

If you have trouble transferring between accounts, some users have been able to combine points between their own accounts — like from Bob’s Ink Business Cash to Bob’s Sapphire Reserve — via secure message. However, you may run into an issue if you try to connect more than one of your cards to a single card that belongs to someone else. Chase allows you to combine/transfer to someone else who lives in your household (or a co-owner of your business for business cards), but I’ve had complications with this from time to time. For example, let’s say that Joe and Suzy live in the same household and are joint owners of a business and have the following accounts:

• Chase Freedom Unlimited (Joe)
• Chase Ink Business Cash (Joe)
• Chase Sapphire Reserve (Suzy)

Joe first combines points from his Freedom Unlimited to Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve. Later, he logs into his Ink Business Cash account and tries to combine points with Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve. Joe may run into an error adding Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve card to combine points. This has happened in our household several times. In that case, Joe should log into his Freedom Unlimited account and remove Suzy as a household member (click “remove saved card). About 24 hours later, he should be able to add Suzy to his Ink Business Cash in order to combine his points to her account. The easy solution I’ve found is to create a loop. In the example scenario they should transfer like this:

Joe’s Freedom Unlimited —> Joe’s Ink Business Cash —> Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve —> Joe’s Freedom Unlimited

Creating a loop chain has solved that problem in my household. As noted, it took 24 hours after removing accounts to re-add them to other cards, so be aware of that limitation.

Thankfully, it is very easy to keep Chase Ultimate Rewards points alive: simply keep the points in an open Ultimate Rewards account and they will not expire. Note that if you close an Ultimate Rewards card, you will lose any points associated with that card. You should first combine points to move points away from the card you intend to close and to another card that will remain open as per the sharing section above before canceling.

Once you are approved for a Chase card, you have three months to meet the required spend in order to get the signup bonus.  Technically, you’re not supposed to use business credit cards for personal purchases, but it is quite common to do so. If you feel comfortable with it, use the new card for all of your usual spend. If your usual spend isn’t enough, consider using the Plastiq bill pay service to use your card to pay bills that can’t usually be paid by credit card (rent, mortgage, contractors, etc.).