Why You Should Apply In-Branch for Chase Cards Right Now

[Offers contained within this article may no longer be available]

Chase is absolutely killing the competition right now with it’s flurry of new credit card offers. Right now, there are great targeted offers out for both the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Freedom Unlimited. These offers are some of the highest I’ve ever seen for these cards, so they are definitely worth considering. 

Chase Sapphire Preferred

The standard offer for the the Chase Sapphire Preferred is 50,000 Ultimate Rewards after spending $4,000. However, right now there are in-branch offers for 70,000 Ultimate Rewards after spending $4,000. 

The catch is that the offer appears to be a targeted in-branch, pre-approval. This means that it’s not guaranteed to show up for you when you go into a Chase branch and apply for it. However, there’s still good news. 

A lot of people have had success with getting this offer matched when they previously applied for the Sapphire Preferred in-branch.  If you previously applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred online your chances of getting a matched offer for this seem to be very low to nonexistent, though. 

Therefore, I recommend that if you’re considering going for the Sapphire Preferred right now, you go in-branch to apply. If you don’t get the targeted 70K offer, then send Chase a secure message requesting to matched to the higher 70K offer. Data points suggest that you might have some luck.  

Chase Freedom Unlimited 

There’s also another targeted pre-approval offer out right now for the Chase Freedom Unlimited. The standard offer for the Chase Freedom Unlimited is 15,000 Ultimate Rewards for $500 spend, but there’s apparently in-branch offers for 30,000 Ultimate Rewards right now after $500 spend (plus 2,500 Ultimate Rewards when you add an authorized user). 

Again, it appears that you can get these offers matched but you need to have applied in-branch. 

Combining these offers

I’m still not 100% sure about the data points on applying for multiple pre-approval offers in branch. While you can apply for two cards at once in-branch, many people think that if you had both of these pre-approval offers and chose to apply for one card then the other credit card offer might disappear. That could be true so you definitely want to go for the most valuable card that you can and probably assume that you won’t be able to get to the other (although you could always try to get matched to it with a secured message).

What makes the decision difficult right now is the existing 100K offer for the Chase Sapphire Reserve. That card is the #1 credit card available right now (according to me) and it’s not clear how much longer the 100K offer is going to be around for. Thus, if you get the Sapphire Preferred pre-approval or the Freedom Unlimited pre-approval, you might still want to consider going after the Reserve, since we still don’t know how long that 100K offer is going to be around for.  

Application rules 

As always, before applying for Chase cards, make sure you are versed in their credit card application rules: the Chase 5/24 Rule, Chase 30 day rule. And keep in mind that because these targeted offers are pre-approvals they should allow you to override the 5/24 rule.

I don’t usually recommend applying for two Chase “house” cards at once because it seems to increase rejection rates sometimes. However, given all of these amazing offers out right now, it might be worth it to try to apply for two Chase house cards at the same time to get the inquiries combined and try to take advantage of these offers while you can.  

Also, If I were going to try to combine applications of one of these targeted offers with the 100K Reserve offer I would definitely apply for the targeted offer first since it could go away if you applied for the Reserve first. The exception to this would be if I were already over 5/24 and got pre-approvals for all of these cards, including the Reserve. In that case, I’d go for the Reserve first since the sign-up bonus is bigger and the Reserve is just a more valuable credit card to me. 

H/T to Reddit. 

 

3 comments

  1. to see if i’m pre-approved online, must i have a chase bank account, or is there another way to see this? if so, i’d love to know. thanks!

    1. You check for your “pre-qualified” offers online here: https://www.chase.com/prequalified. However, pre-qualified is different from pre-approvals which can only be checked in branch. (If you end up establishing a good relationship with a banker they can check this over the phone for you and save you time but you’ll sill need to apply in-branch.) I personally don’t think you need to have a bank account, although some out there do (it probably does nothing but help your odds).

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