Registration is now open to activate your 5x category bonus earning with your Chase Freedom® Card. For the second quarter of 2020, the bonus categories are grocery stores, gym memberships and fitness club purchases.

As usual, the 5x earning rate only applies to the first $1,500 in spending in those categories. If you max out your bonus category spending for the quarter, you’ll get 7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards® points.

7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards® points are worth $75 in cash. But you can get much more value by transferring to any of the following credit cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred – #1 travel card for beginners
• Chase Sapphire Reserve – great for frequent travelers
• Ink Business Preferred – highest Chase sign-up bonus for business customers

Once your points have been transferred to one of the above cards, you can amplify the value even further! If you transfer the points to Chase’s travel partners like United Airlines, Southwest or Hyatt, you can get way more value than the original $75.

7,500 points could be enough for a one-way flight worth hundreds of dollars to many great destinations!

For more information on Chase’s flexible points program, check out The Complete Guide to Chase Ultimate Rewards®.

Key Things to Remember

• You need to activate the 5x earning rate by June 14, 2019
• The promotion runs from April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020
• The promotion is valid at grocery stores and on gym memberships and fitness club purchases

How to Activate

Unfortunately Chase doesn’t automatically enroll you into the bonus category earning promotion each quarter. To activate, you can go to the Chase Activation website and enter your last name, zip code and the last four digits of your Chase Freedom® Card.

Alternatively you can log into your Chase Freedom® Card account and activate from there. You can also sign-up one time to have Chase send you a reminder email each quarter. That email contains a button for easy 1-click activation.

Bottom Line

In today’s COVID-19 dominated environment, where half of the country is sheltering in place and social distancing, many gyms and fitness clubs are closed. Thus this category is basically a bust for the upcoming quarter.

However, the category of grocery stores comes at the perfect time. With many restaurants also closed, people are eating more meals at home which means more grocery shopping. Make sure to check the list of participating merchants because some like Walmart and Target are not included.

Considering the global pandemic is going to be with us for a while, it should be fairly easy to reach the $1,500 spending max this quarter. You only need to spend $125 per week to reach it. Remember that once you reach the max, all purchases go back to earning only 1 point per dollar spent. So don’t forget to switch back to your regular grocery credit card to avoid missing out on those points. For example, once I hit my $1,500 limit, I’ll go back to putting grocery purchases on my American Express® Gold Card.

While the next few months may be difficult for many of us, it’s nice to know we’ll be earning 5x Chase Ultimate Rewards® points that we can use to travel with once this outbreak is behind us. Be safe everyone!