Preparing for new Sapphire Reserve cards

Rumors have been swirling that major changes to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card are on their way, and that a new Sapphire business card is coming too. I took a few steps to prepare so that I’d be ready to take advantage of new perks and (likely) big new welcome offers. What’s the rush? The blog, Miles Earn & Burn, reported that a “trustworthy anonymous source” said that Sapphire Reserve changes will be officially announced on June 17, and the changes will go live on June 21. That’s really soon!

Background

About a month ago, a Reddit user posted leaked information about changes coming the Sapphire Reserve card (Stephen covered the details here). Then, early this week, Chase launched an advertising campaign saying that a refreshed Sapphire Reserve card will be coming this summer. Additionally, they teased with an image of a business card that most suspect will be a business version of the Sapphire Reserve (see Stephen’s post about the business card, here). Here are the rumored Sapphire Reserve changes:

• Annual fee – Increasing from $550 to $795
• Earning categories:
  • 8x Chase Travel bookings (currently 10x for hotels and cars and 5x for flights)
  • 4x flights & hotels booked directly (currently 3x on all travel)
  • 3x dining (same as current)
  • 1x everywhere else (same as current)
• Maintained coupons:
  • $25 per month DoorDash credit
  • $120 DoorDash DashPass credit
  • $10 per month Lyft credit
• Added coupons:
  • $10 per month Peloton credit
  • $250 twice-annual Edit credit (Chase’s version of Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts) (i.e. $500 per year)
  • $150 twice-annual dining credit via Sapphire Reserve Tables (i.e. $300 per year)
  • $150 twice-annual StubHub credit (i.e. $300 per year)
  • $250 Apple TV+ & Apple Music credit
• Spend $75,000 in a year & receive:
  • $500 Southwest credit
  • Southwest A-List status
  • IHG Diamond status
  • $250 The Shops credit

In addition to big new annual fees, it’s likely that the new/changed cards will come with big new welcome bonuses. Here’s what I’ve done to prepare for both…

Consumer Sapphire Reserve Annual Fee

The consumer Sapphire Reserve card is expected to increase its annual fee from $550 to $795. If you currently have a Sapphire Reserve card, I wouldn’t expect you to get charged the new annual fee until the end of your current account year. However, you’ll probably get access to many if not all of the Sapphire Reserve’s new features / coupons right away. Therefore, if you’re interested in the new card but don’t yet have a Sapphire Reserve, it can make sense to upgrade from a Sapphire Preferred or Freedom card, especially if your account anniversary has recently passed. For example, if you have a card with a May anniversary date and you upgrade now to the Sapphire Reserve, I would expect that you won’t have to pay the higher annual fee until May 2026.

Some may remember that I recently downgraded my Sapphire Reserve to a Freedom card so that I could get in on the 100K Sapphire Preferred offer that ended in May. This morning I checked to make sure that I had earned the 100K bonus on the Sapphire Preferred (I had) and then I called Chase to reverse the downgrade. I now have both a Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve card. After I have some experience with the new Sapphire Reserve card, I’ll downgrade one or the other (or both) to a Freedom card (which has no annual fee) the next time the annual fee comes due.

Consumer Sapphire Reserve Welcome Bonus

I’m assuming that the consumer Sapphire Reserve card will launch with at least a 100,000 point offer. It will most likely also keep the current rules: you can’t get it if you currently have a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card; and you can’t get it if you’ve earned a welcome bonus for a Sapphire card in the past 48 months.

Personally, I’m out of luck for getting a welcome bonus for the refreshed Sapphire Reserve since I just got the welcome bonus for the Sapphire Preferred about a week ago. My wife, though, may be a candidate. She last signed up for the Sapphire Preferred card in 2021, so I checked my records to see when she signed up: June 2021. That’s almost exactly 48 months ago. So the next question was when exactly did she earn the welcome bonus at that time? I looked through her old card statements and found that her welcome bonus was awarded in July 2021. More specifically, the charge that put her over the minimum spend required was dated July 17th. Based on related data points, I believe that Chase will count July 18th 2025 as being more than 48 months.

So, for my wife, as long as the new Sapphire Reserve offer is available as late as July 18th, she should be able to apply. However, she currently had her Sapphire Preferred card open. So, we did the following to rid her of her current Sapphire Preferred card:

1. We moved her Chase Ultimate Rewards points from her Sapphire Preferred card to one of her Ink business cards
2. We moved most of her Sapphire Preferred credit line to another Chase personal card she has (we were able to do that online!)
3. From her account, we sent a secure message asking Chase to cancel her Sapphire Preferred account (Note: If you want to product change rather than cancel, it’s necessary to call. Calling to downgrade to a Freedom card would be better since it would more quickly show on her account that she doesn’t have a Sapphire card, but she hates calling banks, so we decided to cancel. I expect it will take about a month for the Sapphire account to clear off her account)
4. I changed our streaming service autopayments from her Sapphire Preferred to mine  (the Sapphire Preferred card earns 3x for streaming services).

Business Sapphire Welcome Bonus

There’s not much one can do to prepare for a likely big Sapphire business card welcome bonus. I don’t think that having Ink cards or Sapphire personal cards will impact your ability to get this new card. However, it may be necessary to be under 5/24 to get approved…

I logged into Travel Freely and found that I’m over 5/24 until September, but my wife and son are both under 5/24. Theoretically they may be able to each get both the refreshed Sapphire Reserve card and the new Sapphire business card!

Are these cards keepers?

I’m confident that the welcome bonuses for the refreshed and new card will be big enough to make it well worth paying the first year annual fees. The question is whether they’ll be worth keeping long term. Fortunately, we’ll have plenty of time to decide. If you sign up for the introductory offers, there will be no reason to cancel until the second year annual fee comes due.

We don’t yet know enough about the business card to make any guesses about whether it will be a keeper, but enough information has leaked to make some informed guesses about the consumer card. See Stephen’s post for a more complete analysis, but here are some quick thoughts of my own…

1. At first I was disappointed about the idea of losing the 3x “all travel” category, but as I think about it more, airfare and hotels make up the bulk of my travel spend. So, I should come out ahead with the new ability to earn 4x for direct flights and hotels. Additionally, the ability to earn 8x for flights booked through Chase Travel may be enough to sway me to book through a portal rather than direct (I’m still on the fence on that one, though!).
2. Assuming the current annual $300 travel credit goes away: that’s a big bummer. That was one of the few credit card “coupons” that I used each year with zero thought. The new coupons will take more planning.
3. The new “coupons” that offer credits for specific merchants (Peloton, StubHub, Apple TV) can help make the card a keeper if you regularly use those services. However, I don’t think there are many households where having more than one of these cards would make sense.
4. I’m not too excited about The Edit (luxury hotel) credits. I already have a hard time finding good uses for my Amex Platinum Fine Hotels & Resorts credits, so now I’ll just have more of the same to deal with.
5. I am excited about the $150 Sapphire Reserve Tables semi-annual credits. I looked up the restaurants available through that platform (here) and found quite a few restaurants that I’ve been meaning to try. I don’t mind being “forced” to eat out at great restaurants.
6. I rarely use StubHub, but I guess that will change with the $150 semi-annual credits. We’ll see.
7. We already subscribe to Apple TV, so that credit will be an easy win. We might as well check out Apple Music as well if it will be free after rebate.
8. With the $10 monthly Lyft credits I expect that I’ll be able to use them as intended a few times per year.
9. I don’t use Peloton, so that credit will be a waste.

Overall, I expect I’ll be able to get about $700 to $800 back each year from the card’s coupons without much effort. Since that’s close to the annual fee, my best guess is that one card in the family will be a keeper. I like having the ability to earn 4x valuable points for hotel & airfare while also getting best in class travel protections (assuming that stays). However, if we had more than one, I think the coupons have diminishing returns so I find it very unlikely that we would keep more than one.

If the business card is similar but with different coupons, I could imagine keeping both a business and personal card in the family, but we’ll have to wait and see what that looks like!

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