Whether your credit card has an annual fee of $1 or $1,000, it’s worth evaluating the fee every time you have to pay it to see if you can justify the fee for the coming year.
This Ink Business Preferred Credit Card The annual fee is as low as $95, but is it worth it? It’s not free to keep this card in your wallet every year, so what do you get by paying $95 a year?
Let’s take a look at the perks and benefits that the Ink Business Preferred card offers and see if the annual fee is worth it for the second year and beyond.
welcome bonus
new applicant First choice for ink business Earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus points after you spend $15,000 in purchases within three months of account opening. TPG values Ultimate Rewards points at 2 cents each, so the bonus is worth $2,000.
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You’ll notice that Chase says this bonus is worth $1,000 as cash back, or $1,250 worth of travel when redeeming points in the Chase travel portal.The latter allows you to spend your points like cash to book travel at 1.25 cents each when you have an Ink Business Preferred (the same as using the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card But each point below this exchange is worth 1.5 cents Chase Sapphire Reserve. Sapphire Preferred also allows you to redeem points for statement credit at 1 cent each.
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However, you can get better value from the points than at 1.25 cents per point. With Chase’s airline and hotel transfer partners, you can use your points on hotel stays and flights. You can get more value here.
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phone protection
When you pay your monthly wireless bill with an Ink Business Preferred card, you get protection against theft or damage to your phone. This applies to you and any employees listed on your wireless bill.
With this benefit, phones associated with wireless accounts are covered up to $1,000 per claim. There is a $100 deductible per claim, up to 3 claims within a 12-month period.
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Shopping and Travel Protection
Ink Business Preferred offers two types of purchase protection: Purchase Protection and Extended Warranty Protection.
Purchase protection covers damage or theft for up to 120 days on new purchases. This benefit can cover the cost of repairing or replacing items up to a limit of $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per account. However, there are exceptions such as animals, live plants and motor vehicles.
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Extended warranty protection adds one year to a manufacturer’s three-year or shorter warranty. This benefit is limited to a maximum of $10,000 per claim and a maximum of $50,000 per account. Warranty must be issued in the United States to be eligible.
While traveling, you can take advantage of the roadside dispatch benefit to get pay-per-ride assistance when you need it. This helps with downtime, dead batteries, or flat tires, for example.
When renting a car, if you pay for the entire rental cost with Ink Business Preferred, you can decline the rental company’s collision insurance and get a collision damage waiver. This benefit can cover the cost of repairing or replacing the leased vehicle. This is the primary coverage when leasing for business purposes, when leasing outside of your country of residence, or if you do not have your own auto insurance. Coverage applies when your rental is 31 days or less and will cover any towing costs you may incur, but not certain types of vehicles.
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Plus, with trip cancellation and interruption coverage, you can get coverage up to $5,000 per person and $10,000 per trip. This benefit covers trips that are canceled or shortened due to reasons such as inclement weather and illness, and will reimburse you for prepaid, non-refundable travel expenses. Thanks to travel delay insurance, you can also get reimbursed for up to $500 in expenses if your trip is delayed by 12 hours or more.
You can view full details of these benefits in the Benefits Guide for limitations and exclusions. For more information, see our full review of the Ink Business Preferred card.
other allowances
When you use the Ink Business Preferred card, you’ll earn Chase Ultimate Rewards, which TPG considers 2 cents each. You can transfer these points to 14 different airline and hotel partners. You can also redeem travel points for 1.25 cents through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal, using your points like cash to pay for travel.
You’ll earn 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 in purchases per account anniversary in the following categories: travel, shipping purchases, Internet service, cable service, phone service, and ad purchases on social media sites and search engines. After you exceed your $150,000 spending limit, you’ll earn 1 point per dollar spent on these purchases and 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases.
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If your business spends heavily in these categories, you can earn 450,000 points per year after reaching the $150,000 limit cap. TPG valued the points at $9,000.
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It’s worth evaluating these income categories to see how effective they are for your business.You should also consider how these categories work for you while also holding a personal credit card that earns Ultimate Rewards points, such as Chase Sapphire Reserve.
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Unlike Chase’s other business credit cards, when you have the Ink Business Preferred Card, you have direct access to Chase’s money transfer partners.Those with No Annual Fee Cards ink business cash credit card (and personal credit cards such as infinite pursuit of freedom) does not have access to Chase’s transfer partners and requires a premium card such as Ink Business Preferred or a personal card such as Sapphire Reserve or Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Redeem points this way. So it’s not just the points you can earn, but also the redemption options you should consider.
Having a Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards points for an annual fee is necessary to have the widest choice in how you can spend your points — and this card does just that.
the bottom line
Pay the $95 annual fee on Ink Business Preferred, and you get shopping and travel protection, cell phone insurance, and rewards categories that make sense for many businesses. You can also transfer your points to more than a dozen hotel and airline partners for extra redemption value on award travel.
But if you already have a card that supports these transfers, and the bonus-earning category doesn’t apply to your business, the annual fee for Ink Business Preferred probably isn’t worth it — no matter how much it costs.
Official application link: Get 100,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus points if you spend $15,000 within three months of account opening Ink Business Preferred Credit Card.