The Chase Freedom Unlimited is popular because of the liberal way in which you can use this card to earn cashback. You can get 5% cashback when you make a travel booking through Chase Ultimate Rewards. You have potential to earn 3% cashback on your dining, takeout, drugstore purchases. You can earn cashback at 1.5% on every other purchase.
You do not earn points for certain types of transactions such as balance transfers, cash advances, purchase of lottery tickets,buying gaming chips, gambling activities, issuance of checks to your account and interest charges.
The cashback you earn do not expire and there is no cap on the rewards you can acquire by using your card.
Benefits of Chase Freedom Unlimited Credit Card
APR offer
The card features a 0% intro APR for 15 months from account opening on purchases and balance transfers. After the intro period, a variable APR of 14.99%–23.74% will apply. Chase charges a fee for balance transfers. You pay either $5 or 5% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater.
If you have applied for a Chase Freedom Unlimited card or any other Chase card within the last 24 months and have received a bonus then you wouldn’t be eligible for the APR bonus offer.
No Annual Fee
Chase Freedom Unlimited doesn’t have an annual fee. Thus there is no recurring cost each year for holding on to this card. You must have good credit to be eligible for this card.
Rewards Redemption
Chase Freedom Unlimited has multiple ways through which you can redeem the cashback rewards. It can a statement credit, gift card, check, direct deposit and shopping with your points on Amazon.com or Chase Pay.
The redemption value may change based on which medium you choose to encash your reward. During checkout, if you use your points to pay on Amazon.com then the redemption value for every 100 points is $0.80.
Another way to maximize the reward potential is to club your points with another existing Chase card such as Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve or Chase Ink Business Preferred card. You get 25% more by pooling your points and booking a trip through Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.
A great way to use your points towards travel is transferring the points to a Chase airline or hotel partner. You can transfer your points at the 1 to 1 value with the travel partners such as JetBlue TrueBlue, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards, United MileagePlus.
Protections that are available on Chase Freedom Unlimited card.
Fraud protection and alerts: While you may be busy shopping for grocery or building your business, Chase keeps a track of the activities on your card on a real-time basis. If they notice any unusual activity on your card, you may get a notification via text, email or a call from Chase.
Zero liability protection: If you notice a purchase which is not done by you or your card is lost or stolen and you report it to Chase then you may not be held responsible for unauthorized charges that are made on your credit card.
Purchase protection: The items which you purchase are covered for 120 days under purchase protection against theft or damage. Consumables, perishables, jewelery, motorized vehicles and its parts are few of the items that are not covered under purchase protection. The items are covered up to $500 per claim and $50,000 per account.
Extended warranty: Chase Freedom Unlimited offers an additional year of warranty on the original manufacturer’s warranty of three years or less. To know more about the items that can qualify for this coverage you can refer to the benefits guide here.
The difference between Chase Freedom Unlimited and Chase Freedom Flex credit card
The way these two cards rewards are structured is the key differentiator. Chase Freedom Flex requires users to activate combined categories each quarter to earn cashback. The 5% cashback bonus is capped at $1,500 in combined purchases, beyond which you get Cashback at 1%.
Both cards offer similar cashback for travel booking through Ultimate rewards portal, drugstore purchases and dining. Freedom Unlimited differs by giving you 1.5% cash back for all other purchases vs the 1% which is offered by Freedom Flex.
Freedom Unlimited credit card offers the same welcome bonus as Freedom Flex.
You can earn a welcome bonus of $200 after you spend $500 on purchases within the first three months of account opening.
These two cards are often compared against each other whereas they are good companions for each other. Freedom Flex can be used to earn cashback in targeted categories as per your spending each quarter and Freedom Unlimited can earn points everywhere else.
Drawbacks
You would have to pay a foreign transaction fee for the purchases you make outside of the US and a cash advance fee is charged when you make a withdrawal from the ATM.
To Conclude
Chase Freedom would fit the requirement of all those individuals who are looking for a simple, flat percentage cashback card.
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