Chase has added a new feature called ‘Pay Yourself Back‘ where Chase Sapphire Preferred & Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders can redeem points for 1.25¢/1.5¢ per point towards purchases made in these categories:
- Grocery Stores
- Dining (includes restaurants, takeout, and eligible delivery services)
- Home improvement stores, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s
One question we had when this benefit was announced was what would happen to points that were earned on those purchases. For example if you make a purchase of $100 at a grocery store using a Chase Sapphire Reserve you’d currently earn 500 points. If you use the ‘Pay Yourself Back’ feature to erase that purchase for 6,667 points would you keep those 500 earned points or would they be forfeit? We reached out to Chase and they confirmed you’ll keep the points earned.
Related:
- Chase Announces Major Temporary Benefits On Sapphire Reserve/ Preferred ‘Pay Yourself Back’ (1.5 Cents Cashout; Easy Travel Credit; $450 Renewal)
- Should You Upgrade To The Chase Sapphire Reserve?
- Reminder: You Can Upgrade To The Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve From Chase Slate/Freedom Cards
- Does Upgrading To Chase Sapphire Reserve Restart My 48-Month Signup Bonus Clock?
What if you buy something and then have to return it, but you’ve already redeemed points against it? Do they give you back your points or do you get a “statement credit” refund?
Datapoint – got the $300 travel credit from groceries purchases and still received points for it. Made a small travel purchase afterwards and did not receive points for it. Seems like the first $300 of travel don’t get points regardless of whether you are getting a credit for it or not.
Does Chase reverse the 3x points on a DoorDash charge from March if you use the “Pay Yourself Back” feature on that charge? Also, how does it work if your travel credit was used for a grocery charge? I still see that one eligible for the Pay Yourself Back feature.
If your grocery purchases use the $300 travel credit you will not get any UR points for it. Think of it like your first $300 in groceries are free since they are covered by the travel credit. Since you are not earning any points on the grocery purchases you will not see that transaction in the Pay Yourself Back feature area.
That is not correct. My $300 credit just reset and I got the “travel credit” and 5x points for a grocery purchase of almost $100 (gift card less store discount). AND I did the pay yourself back to cash in points for the purchase. So basically you can triple dip.
It appears that the first $300 in travel will not get points, even if you aren’t getting the travel credit for it because it was already used. There is wording in the other thread about that. It’s like they hardcoded the $300 no points thing specifically for travel, not for whatever gets the annual credit applied.
Did the same as well. Still had $300 travel credit to use up, recent grocery purchase earned 5x points, statement credit for portion of $300 travel credit and Pay Yourself Back statement credit.
I was able to Pay Myself Back for a DoorDash charge reimbursed by the credit (charge was $65, credit applied for $60, applied points worth $5.02). The purchase did earn 3x dining.
Grocery charges offset by the $300 travel credit were not available for Pay Yourself Back. They did earn points.
Worth noting: You can pay yourself back for purchases you’ve already paid off. You just get statement credit.
I’d also recently upgraded a Freedom Unlimited to Sapphire Reserve, and was able to pay myself back for grocery purchases made before the upgrade.
If that is true (about not being able to pay yourself back for charges covered by the $300 credit), it’s a change they made in the past day or two. I’ll see what happens when some more of my charges post, hopefully in the morning. Not that it matters much since i charged $1200 in gift cards (I purchased $1300 total but only $100 cleared).
How far back did they let you pay grocery purchases you’d already paid off?
When you upgraded to CSR were you able to use your old CFU for purchases or did you have to wait for the new CSR to arrive?
I think you have 90 days.
Thanks for the response.
I wrote the below comment in response to something
Celia wrote in a different Chase thread but she hasn’t replied yet. Do you know the answers to any of my questions?
So if I upgrade my Freedom to CSR this month I will be able to apply all of my old UR points at a 1.5 rate toward grocery purchases on my Freedom that I haven’t paid for yet? Should I wait until the Freedom statement posts to make the upgrade or that won’t matter?
Should I transfer all of my UR points to this Freedom before I make the upgrade to CSR or can that be done later on and still get the 1.5 benefit?
After the upgrade were you able to use the old Freedom right away for the 5X rate in June or did you need to wait until your new CSR arrived?
I think you can keep your points until you transfer.
I don’t think it matters if you combine points now or after the upgrade. The 1.5 benefit will have to go through the CSR so ultimately (no pun intended), the UR points will have to make it there before paying yourself back.
As for using right away, I think they change the account number but that’s just a guess.
They did not change my account number wen I upgraded from a standard Sapphire card a few years ago, nor when I switched from CSR to Freedom Unlimited after a couple of years. I’d be surprised if they change it when going from Freedom to CSR.
As for transferring points it doesn’t matter when you do it.
I’ve never upgraded but I’ve downgraded a few times (ie CSP to CF) and the account # didn’t change.
Thanks for the info. I think I’ll call tomorrow to see about doing the upgrade.
It’s really odd that the email alert for this comment shows the poster’s name as “Jack” instead of “Celia”. I was wondering why Jack was apologizing to me.
Possibly, might be related to nesting. Let me know if it keeps happening or if it’s a once off.
So I have a bunch of charges that are now showing up in my balance and the transactions showed up in “Pay Yourself Back” but did not actually show up in the transactions list. I was able to redeem all of them for points, even though in theory $204.05 should have been deducted or the annual credit. Not sure if it’s a timing thing or why it worked differently for you than it did for me, although I believe someone else had reported the same thing as I observed.
Does this also work on Wal-Mart? Any limitations at all?
only works at Neighborhood stores which are coded as grocery stores. Do not work at supercenter or regular WalMart. You can buy WMT GC at Neighborhood stores to spend at other WMT type locations so you can use the feature on Neighborhood stores purchases but your actual spends actually at other WMT places.
It works at the Wal-Mart Supercenters, and Target’s too, if they have the full grocery selection.
Works at our local supercenter so YMMV
It does not have to be neighborhood Walmart. It has to have grocery section and deli. Do $5 purchase and find out. Thats what I did and it worked. Mine is not neighborhood WM
what about other credit card companies?
if you use your points to take off your purchases do they deduct the points earned from those purchases? ie Citi, Amex, Capital one?
I’m pretty sure no one deducts points.
Citi Double Cash, sorta. It’s 1% when you spend and 1% when you pay. If you redeem for statement credit, you aren’t paying so you only get the 1% for spending.
A person should never take a statement credit from Citi Double Cash for this very reason. They also offer the option to cash out the points to a bank account. By cashing them out to a bank account, and then using that bank account to make a payment on the card, the person then gets the cash back for the payment.
Sneaky sneaky. Which is why I always redeem to bank account and never statement credit for all my banks. Better safe than sorry even if it is not confirmed on other cards (I don’t even have citi).
I sure hope Chase keeps this in place long-term. It is a great benefit and one that makes the CSR way more valuable for a lot of people to hold.
agreed
Based on just doing it, you also get 5x points on grocery store purchases covered by the new $300 travel credit categories AND “pay yourself back” on those same purchases. Which is pretty darn awesome!
Keep in mind though that if you are a new CSR card holder your first $300 in grocery purchases will be covered by the travel credit which you will not earn 5x points on since the travel credit will be an automatic statement credit for those purchases and shouldn’t show up under PYB eligible.
However if your first grocery purchase is say $500, then you will earn 5x points on $200 ($500 – $300 travel credit) and you can use the PYB feature and use points to write off the $200 of the grocery purchase.
Spend $100 at a restaurant/grocery on the CSR and redeem 6,666 points, earn 500 points, having a net cost of 6,166 points or $0.0162/point. Not bad.
Restaurants are only 3x still, aren’t they?
Apologies if this has already been covered, but will Chase offer this Pay Yourself Back capability for dining and/or travel at 1.25/1.5 cents per point after things settle down? Part of why the Cap One Venture does so well is that you can use their miles to cover travel expenses (tours, attraction tickets, anything charged to a hotel room) retroactively whereas Chase points can only be used to actually book travel. This would make an already appealing card even better.
It’s been a long time since I used Cap One but is it still 1 cent per mile redemption? If so, Chase always offered that via UR redemption of a statement credit or cash at 1 cent per UR point.
Right, but the Pay Yourself Back is offering 1.5 cents back on the Reserve when used toward grocery. I’m wondering if that same rate will stick around, but for the traditional dining and travel categories, when things settle.
That remains to be seen. I would be surprised if it stayed long term, it just doesn’t seem very profitable to them to allow you to spend $100 at the grocery store, get 500 points and then could theoretically use those same 500 points to pay off $7.50 of that purchase.
But for now, I’ll take it.
You could theoretically end up with negative points though. Using points against the purchases that earned them shouldn’t be an issue otherwise you’d go negative if they reversed the points earned on say a single purchase. Long term the solution for Chase is to go back to making these points not so easy to earn or use.
Well, the 5x points on groceries is only a 2 month promotion. Would be great if it continued but I wouldn’t bet on it.
They haven’t announced anything beyond these categories, but the expectation is that the categories might change post-COVID or do a rotating category thing.
If they want to make the ultimate travel card (for me, at least), then set a permanent redemption category on travel. Then I can book in or out of the portal. Living at a United hub and also having the MPE, it really chaps me that I have to choose between the free bag benefit of the MPE that requires me to book direct, versus using points for a redemption. (and before someone says “blah blah transfer to miles” — that is rarely better in my area)
I don’t understand the concern. For travel redemption on the portal they never deducted any bonus points earned. Why would they do that now? Also, other similar “erase” type redemption at other banks don’t remove your points that I am aware of.
At the same time, if I redeem 100,000 points on the Chase Travel Portal for a flight, even though that has a cash value, I don’t earn points on the portion of the purchase paid with points. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Chase to take back points earned if you bought groceries and then, even if in a roundabout wait, used points to pay for those groceries.
I am not sure what you meant by for travel redemption they never deducted points, when we booked our hotels in Paris using Chase points, we never earned points on the point redemption part of that purchase, only on the taxes if required to pay with cash.
We don’t earn points on the $300 travel credit anymore either.
That’s a portal purchase though. Different scenario. Of course you don’t earn points on points you spend directly because it’s sane as transferring at that point. Statement or purchase credits are different. Say you only bought something for $100 from grocery In a given statement, used the modest points to credit 7.50 back on said purchase and they then reversed points earned, this would cause soneone to go negative at that point. Your normal non churning person would be irked and confused as hell by something like this. There’s a reason they don’t retroactively revert points unless you returned something. It’d be convoluted as hell for anyone to understand and piss off their normal customers.
You do not earn any point on travel booking using UR pts. Nor you could “erase” the travel charges with points other than redeem a statement credit at 1x, same rate as if you redeem for cash directly deposit to your bank account or get a check. NO INCENTIVE.
Right now you get to erase the eligible charges at 1.5x, while still earn pts, and in this case 5x on grocery until June 30. Dont you not see there are major differences, as in, completely different concepts?