The Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex categories for the second quarter of 2025 can now be activated:
- Earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases on Amazon and Select Streaming Services from 4/1/2025 – 6/30/2025.
Some people will find Amazon useful. Personally I have a big Amazon gift card balance and probably won’t use that.
You can also buy third-party gift cards on Amazon (affiliate link), such as Visa, Best Buy, Starbucks, Lowe’s, Safeway and dozens more. Even someone with a large Amazon gift card balance might find this Chase Freedom category useful for Amazon or third-party gift cards purchases since gift card bought on Amazon can not be paid for with an Amazon balance.
Streaming is inherently limited and not too exciting. I can’t yet find the link with the details on which streaming services count. (It might be possible to load up your Apple or Google Play balances with this category; let us know if you see anything like this work.)
You can activate the 5% categories at this link. Personally I always wait for the email and activate it through the link in the email.
In past months at the end of each quarter, I’ve gotten emails from Chase asking me to select a category for the next quarter around the 20th of the month.
Well, now it’s the 25th of the month and I still haven’t gotten such an email.
So apparently Chase is indeed having issues with it.
Just because some people (including anyone who read the post by lochquel below) know about a site to go directly to where they can set the next quarter’s category, that doesn’t solve it for people who don’t know that until Chase truly fixes it.
Luckily, in my case, I don’t care about signing up, since I have no need for these categories, since I don’t use streaming other than through Amazon Prime, and I have an Amazon Prime card already. So I can just wait until they send me those emails to sign up, however long that does end up taking.
And now it’s the 30th of the month, 10 days after I usually get those emails from Chase each quarter, I still haven’t gotten one of those emails.
I stocked up on Amazon gift cards from Pepper when they were 14% off (unfortunately, they’re no longer available). I have both the Freedom and Freedom Flex, but I don’t use any streaming services. I was really hoping for 5X on PayPal this quarter to cover my taxes…
There is No Q2 categoty for Chase Freedom showing yet to activate !
So it is too early, don’t log in expecting to see it to activate ,
No such a thing yet, FYI
Try this until they fix it proper, comrade:
https://www.chasebonus.com/
Q1 2025 had grocery category which I almost maximized. I got my haircut for self care. I did not fitness clubs, spa services, Norwegian cruise lines, or tax preparation services. I might use tax preparation services before the deadline this month. I assume Q2 2025 Chase customers will use Amazon for Whole Foods grocery stores and Amazon gift cards. Another possibility of prepaying the entire year of streaming services. If you spend $1500 in three months on streaming services then you need to cancel them all and get a public library card.
Anyone with insider knowledge? Who funds the 5% here?
Interchange is usually around 2%, so 5% means someone is taking a 3% hit here.
The only comparable data point for how much a giant retailer would pay a giant bank, is Costco, which pays 0.4% as per this article.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-only-takes-visa-means-140013491.html?guccounter=1
My guess is the merchant likely eats it. A thought I often have is: how many times do customers either lose or simply forget about their gift cards? A quick query to GPT 4.5 says roughly 10-20% goes unclaimed, so it’s a guaranteed win for any merchant that can to sell as many as possible.
Maybe when there is 1 specific merchant mentioned (ie Amazon). However, when Chase offers a general category (ie gas, grocery, etc), it’s almost certainly Chase that “eats it”.
Correct.
Apologies for the low quality comment, and thanks for not flaming me 🙂 I was thinking strictly GCs. Agree with you that the bank is likely “eating it”, and they likely make up the difference through a commission of sorts through their partner relationships (e.g. UR transfer partners, online travel agencies, etc). I’ll still self proclaim this low quality as OP was looking for folks with insider knowledge, and I’m speculating.
Its 3% of $1500. I don’t think chase is going to negotiate per quarter rate with Amazon if I have to make a guess. Why many keep this card essentially for the 5% and chase gets active customer base.
I now run all extended warranty through CFU as the next closest we have in free tier is Citi DC.
And interchange is never flat 2%, it varies by industry and type of card signature visa vs others.
Will Whole Foods count for Amazon like last year?
It does on the Amazon credit card, so who knows
Also very interested in this
I can confirm that Whole Foods earns 5X
Personally, I have a sizeable Amazon gift card balance (like
Chuck mentioned above he has), plus I have an Amazon Prime card (which I mostly use Whole Foods, but sometimes for Amazon at 5x).
And I don’t use streaming services other than Amazon Prime, and I doubt I’ll start any paid ones this next quarter (I have some free streaming offers still to take advantage of), so this quarter’s Chase benefits are pretty useless to me.
I think Chase should factor in that more and more people are getting the Amazon Prime card, which makes an Amazon bonus on Freedom cards less useful.
They should at least have two other categories when they have Amazon as a Freedom cards category.
Streaming is just one category.
Personally I use 5.25% BofA CR cards for anything Online. That includes Amazon, Target, Costco so every time someone mentions retailer specific card giving less than 5.25% cashback is kind of funny.
But you have to tie up 100k at the worst bank in business.
I’m just holding 400 VTI in Merrill Edge. I periodically churn brokerage bonuses too, including Merrill Edge.
I don’t care about people’s opinion on what’s the worst bank in business. 15 years ago someone’s grandma had the same opinion and recommended Wells Fargo to me as the best bank. We all know how that turned out. What a joke.
Yes, but they’re not 5.25% cashback for many ordinary people who don’t have big sums of cash to deposit at BofA.
Having $100K+ in investments with Merrill also does the trick.
Any kind of investments? Ie, does a 401k/rollover IRA count?
I don’t see why it wouldn’t count. Call Bac to find out.
Time to give the Freedoms a much deserved 3 month break. Mine are literally puffing, and and sweating from all the workout they have been getting for the past 6 or so months.
As of this morning, March 16, I am unable to activate if I login to Chase and follow the activate link for my legacy Freedom and the Freedom Flex cards. It still shows Q1. However, if I use the link above, both work.
Ditto
I noticed starting Saturday, the Chase app was showing a blank screen for what the 5% category was, but allowed me to activate the nothing category. Logging in via the website, it also showed nothing for the quarter but did not give me the ability to activate.
What a joke. We already get 5% Amazon with our Chase Prime card. And several other cards already have ‘streaming’ benefits, so this is a wash. Super lame. Boo!
UR points are better than Amazon points.
And if you don’t have Prime it’s 5% vs 3%.
UR points are not better than Amazon points for everyone.
Not everyone has the same needs.
I have oodles of airline miles/points (way over 2 million miles in total across several airlines), and I’m about to retire, so I doubt I’ll ever need to transfer UR points to any airline.
Meanwhile, many people don’t recommend transferring UR points to hotel programs because of poor value.
Now, some people may feel that transferring to Hyatt is a big value, but I don’t travel to major redemption destinations, I travel mostly to national parks and other outdoor places, and there are very few Hyatt hotels in those places, and even if so they tend to be low-point-redemption Hyatt hotels, and I have tons of Hyatt points already, and have never used them yet because I had a free Hyatt night cert every year, and that was the only one place I could use a Hyatt hotel most years. In fact, I’m planning to cancel my Hyatt card this year so that I can start gradually using up those Hyatt points.
So if there’s no need to transfer to airlines, and transferring to most hotel programs is no better value than Amazon, what’s the bigger value in that situation for UR points???
Super long and argumentative, but I’ll respond.
Amazon points have to be spent at amazon so their value is <= 1c/pp. UR points can be redeemed for cash or transferred, so their value is >= 1c/pp.
So amazon ponts value <= UR points value. If you add in the optionality value (>0) of UR points, then amazon points value < UR points value. You’re just saying optionality has no value to you in your longwinded post.
But whatever, if you’re happy with your Prime card and hate your Freedom, have at it. I don’t really care.
They don’t have to be spent at Amazon and I wouldn’t recommend anyone do that anyway when that means you don’t get 3-5% on that spend. They redeem like straight up 1cpp cashback with no UR travel options and I just deposit mine in my bank account.
Fair enough. And thanks, I didn’t know about the straight cash back on the prime card as it’s held by P2 (but Amazon makes it available for household members to use even though I’m not an AU, which is weird).
In my thinking I’d max my Freedoms before using the Prime card. But for me, the “real” benefit is getting 5% when prime is paused (of course still need the free shipping on orders over $35).
To be clear, I wasn’t taking issue with this being a lame quarter, just pointing out minor reasons why I’d use Freedom over Prime card.
Unlike Amex, you need an annual fee card to transfer Chase points. So it’s not totally free.
Second, not everyone needs to transfer points from Chase. If someone has oodles of airline and hotel points already, say because they were staying at hotels for work but paid personally for decades, and/or accumulated millions of airline miles seeking lifetime airline status, and they’re no longer working / are retired, and they never travel on business, they may not need to really transfer UR points.
So having one value for UR points for everyone doesn’t make much sense.
And thus it’s fine if you want to use the Freedom over Prime yourself, but you shouldn’t assume that’s the best option for everyone else.
And I see below that you now realize your statement about needing use Prime rewards only for Amazon is not really true. At least not Amazon itself; Amazon owns Whole Foods, so in a corporate sense, Whole Foods is part of Amazon, so if you get cashback to use to cover one month’s Whole Foods purchases, that’s Whole Foods to me and you, but Amazon in a corporate sense.
But if it’s straight cash back at 5% when using for Whole Foods purchase redemption, but not 5% when using it for some Amazon redemptions, then maybe it’s better to wait to redeem for Whole Foods purchase redemption, unless you’re going to evaluate possible Amazon redemptions to verify that it’s truly 5% back on those.
Ok. A couple of things:
I didn’t say that UR points had the same value to everyone. I said UR points have a FLOOR value at 1cpp. I also said Prime points have a CEILING value at 1cpp. That is still true, even if you can cash them out directly. Now if something’s floor is another thing’s ceiling then the first thing has to be greater than or equal to the other thing. It might not be greater than by a lot.. even in your example of people having millions of other points, there is that little epsilon, that at some point, maybe under certain circumstances, maybe in the future, you could use it for a little extra over 1cent per point.
You mention that you need an annual fee for transfers, but you also need an annual or monthly fee for Prime. I keep saying that prime card gives 3% if you don’t pay for prime.
For me, personally, I time my AF of Sapphire cards to coincide when I need and get more use for the UR points and make sure that I get more out even accounting for the AF (and that might be easy because I value primary car insurance, travel insurance, lounge access, etc.). If I have Prime points I want to get rid of them as fast as possible. So far that has been amazon purchases but glad to see i can chase them out.
Another way to look at this is that these points are funny money (currency). The value of prime funny money is always bounded above by the value of actual US dollars. You could argue that it is strictly equal with the cashout option. But it won’t be more. If you have examples where a prime point is worth more than a cent I would be happy to hear.
Well, it’s a little easier to get Prime membership for semi-free if you already have Amazon gift cards that you bought at a big discount, or if someone gave you Amazon gift cards.
Plus for at least some people there can be discounts on Prime membership, but I know of no discounts for any people on credit card annual fees.
While you can pay for the annual fee with points in most cases, you may not get as good value from the points that way as on airline transfers, but even then it depends on how you use the airline miles.
If you only use airline miles for all domestic flights, just because you don’t want to pay, you may not that good value from the point transfer to those airline miles.
Only if you use them for business or first class seats on advance miles purchase international trips are they likely to have theoretically great value, but only if you compare to what that seat would have cost in cash. But you would never have paid for that seat in cash, is that really a valid comparison???
Plus, what if already have a boatload of airline miles at airlines where you’re most likely to do international flights? And you mostly need UR points transfers only for some hotel programs. Is it still always going to be at least 1 cent per point no matter what hotel program you transfer to???
And also don’t assume that everyone wants fancy hotel rooms. Some people who tend to arrive late and travel solo want effective air conditioning more than they want big space, and so lower end hotels often have that while higher hotels often focus on space but have ineffective air conditioning (if you want air condition for sleep, the air conditioner must affect the bed area, not just some other area of the room).
So this brings up the whole issue of the vast variability in points transfers. UR points can be worth even less than 1 cent/point if you transfer them to some program where you use them at very poor value.
And someone in retirement with a big stash of points and miles can have a totally different outlook on point value than someone much younger who doesn’t have a big stash of points and miles, but has more money to spend perhaps.
This is beating a dead horse. Nothing is assumed. The value of UR is max(1cpp, transfer value, PYB value). Thus if in your opportunity set or utility function, transfer value and PYB value is less than 1c/p, then don’t do that but redeem and generate 1c/p… Unless your are foolish, you won’t convert or buy on the travel portal at less than 1cpp because you can charge your card instead and use 1cpp to pay it off. This has nothing to do with assumptions or arguements about everyone, some people, or age. Of course anyone can take a 100 dollar bill and light it on fire. That is not an argument that for some people the value of the 100 dollar bill is zero.
The argument you’re making is that for someone like who who has a ton of airline points it makes no sense to accumulate UR points. That may be close to true but not entirely.. the very nature of being able to transfer to various airlines as needed gives them some value. Or PYB on CSR AF for lounge access and travel insurance (which is a better deal for older folks btw, because CSR trip cancellation is cheaper than an individual policy bought for a specific trip at bookiing, which gets more expensive with age.) If you vow never to travel and never use any benefits, and not help anyone else get the benefits (I’ve gotten award tickets for others) then at worst you can get 1cpp.
If you look at prime points then the value is identitcally (equal sign) 1cpp if you get cash back or use as payment on amazon.
The above doesn’t address cost of AF, but paying with gift cards someone gave you does not change the cost of Prime. It’s either 69 or 139 per annum. That’s to be compared to 95 for CSP or a net 250 for CSR. If you pause prime, you only get 3% back. If I pause CSP or CSR, then I can still earn UR on Freedom for $0/yr and PC to CSP/R as needed and as makes economic sense for redemptions. I might also get a big signup bonus etc.
Sorry, I’m a narcissist, and obviously everyone but me a NPC, so if this or anything doesn’t benefit me, personally and individually, then nothing matters… /s
Great.
Thank goodness for my Citi Custom for groceries, US Bank for Utilities and CIC for Internet etc. Got a Discover for taxes. At 3% for the first year. The surprise category from Chase for insurance I will use it. Anything else I’ll go without.
In case you missed it, Discover is groceries next quarter.