Registration is now open to activate your 5x category bonus earning with your Chase Freedom® Card. For the fourth quarter of 2019, the bonus categories are department stores and purchases made using PayPal or Chase Pay.

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 to lots of 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 December 14, 2019
• The promotion runs from October 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019
• The promotion is valid at department stores, PayPal and Chase Pay

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

With the holiday shopping season almost upon us, it’s no coincidence that Chase has chosen both brick & mortar and online shopping categories. Having department stores as a category makes a lot of sense since many people will be buying holiday gifts at stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s, and JCPenney.

I particularly like that they’ve added mobile payments back as a bonus category as well. Virtually every online merchant accepts payment via PayPal. As long as you set your Chase Freedom® card as the default card within PayPal, you’ll earn the 5% cashback.

The final category is Chase Pay, which many people know little about. It’s Chase’s version of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, etc. It hasn’t gotten a lot of traction because it’s only accepted at a few merchants, like Best Buy, Starbucks and Shell. However, if you have a phone with Samsung Pay, you can use Chase Pay with it to get the 5% cashback. Samsung Pay is widely accepted similar to Apple Pay.

Happy holidays and happy spending!