Credit Cards

Should you merge your Ultimate Rewards as a precaution?

a stuffed animal holding a credit card

We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com and CardRatings. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Monkey Miles is also a Senior Advisor to Bilt Rewards. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.


Nick over at Frequent Miler posted some interesting information he received from a source over at Chase…that Chase is continuing to pursue limitations on internally transferring Ultimate Rewards between accounts – this was originally a rumor based upon a survey reported by DOC. I’d suggest reading either of their posts as they go into detail, but the long and short is that Chase may prohibit transferring 1:1 between Freedom, Unlimited, Preferred, Cash, Reserve, etc. The replacement program would create proportional transfers equal to the redeemable amount of a point at Chase Travel ( or even worse case just cash back for Freedom, Cash, etc).

Transferring between accounts is one of the most favorable aspects of the program, and why we advocate the practice of maximizing Freedom quarterly bonuses, etc. If they were to restrict those transfers I’d stop using Freedom. But, the future is uncertain and we want to hedge ourselves against the worse. So yes, you should go ahead and transfer as a precaution, but where will we be transferring ours?

I’ll be merging mine, but I don’t think I’ll be moving my points to Reserve

Simply put…I don’t know if I want to marry myself to the Reserve indefinitely. Lemme explain:

My thinking/strategy assumes that points remain universally transferrable to partners 1:1 ( Singapore, Korean, etc) – which is how I use my points, i.e. all current Ultimate Rewards point earning cards remain equal in their ability to transfer to partners.

It also considers my preference of redemption: I don’t exercise redemption at 1.5 cents, even though I hold a Reserve, as I prefer to aim towards aspirational redemptions that effectively get a much higher point valuation than 1.5 cents.

So yes, I know that Reserve effectively values Ultimate Rewards the highest for Chase Travel redemptions, and if this is your cup of tea, consider transferring them there, but I don’t, and I want to maintain the most flexibility.  The future scenario has a lot of variables. The most important in my decision being: we don’t know if Chase will limit the TOTAL amount of points that could be moved between accounts, regardless of the ratio. If that happened, and you pre-emptively moved a lot of points to Reserve, you would be locked into having a Reserve for quite a long time, or risk having to make a forced transfer.

  • For instance, if Chase limits the internal transfer amount to say 100k, and you don’t wish to keep your Reserve, but have a balance of 300k UR, you’d have a decision to make. Transfer 100k to say a Biz Preferred, and then either transfer the remaining balance to partners, cash out at 1.5 cents, or keep the card until your balance is transferred or exhausted.

As a result, I’m heavily considering a transfer to my Ink Business Preferred. A $95 annual fee is something I’m pretty comfortable being locked into, and if they devalued Ink Cash transfers, I’d probably cancel it for my both my businesses. All my Chase Business purchases would end up on my Ink Business Preferred.

This would then let me be a true Reserve free agent. If they keep the benefits of the card strong, I’d keep it, if not,  I’d look elsewhere knowing full well I wouldn’t have to make a forced decision because of a large point balance.

Regardless of your decision, and I’d love to hear your strategies, it’ll be a sad day if/when Chase does this, but making a move to protect those valuable UR is a prudent one to make.

Afterall…if it never happens, you don’t lose anything by having consolidated points.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

a blue credit card with lines and symbols

Learn More

 Affiliate link 

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

7 Comments

  • […] news comes on the heels of another rumor that Chase may limit the ability to internally transfer points between accounts ( hence devaluing the points of cards less than the Reserve).  This should be taken into some […]

  • Patrick April 27, 2018

    What’s the rush to transfer? You really think that we will wake up some morning and Chase will say no more transfers with absolutely no warning?

  • Telnar April 27, 2018

    Do you have the option to convert your Reserve to a Preferred (which is also $95) down the road, without disrupting the points that you move there?

    • Miles April 27, 2018

      Telnar – it’s certainly an option now

  • james April 27, 2018

    Wow, you raise a very good point about being married to the CSR. After yesterday transferring all points from all sources (2 freedoms, 3 inks) I was wondering, what if they decide to shutdown this card for any reason at all? If the card was stolen/compromised, would I still have immediate access to points when I need them?

  • Christian April 27, 2018

    I transferred the points in my Freedom Unlimited account over to the CSR UR account yesterday.

  • Thomas April 27, 2018

    I sent all my points from my Freedom to my wife’s CSP just to preserve the ability to transfer to partners just in case.

Leave a Reply to Patrick Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.