Understanding Chase 5/24 Rule

Recently, credit card companies have been implementing some changes discouraging people from applying for the same card multiple times. The company that took the most extreme approach is American Express – you can now only get the sign-up bonus on each of their cards once per lifetime! Chase also has a limiting factor, but not on sign-up bonuses, it’s on approving you for a credit card. Chase generally doesn’t approve people for certain credit cards if they’ve applied for more than five credit cards in the past 24 months– That’s what we call the Chase 5/24 rule.

Understanding Chase 5/24 Rule

The main thing to know about this rule is it’s not limited to card applications with Chase. If you’ve applied for more than 5 cards with ANY bank/company in the last 24 months, you’re most probably not getting approved by Chase. This is a strategy I believe implemented by Chase in order to avoid customers who apply for multiple credit cards only for the sign-up bonus and don’t generally use all these cards after they’ve reached the minimum spend to earn the bonus.

As reported by Doctor of Credit, the Chase 5/24 rule doesn’t apply on all Chase cards.

Here’s a list of cards affected by Chase 5/24 rule:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred
• Chase Freedom
• Chase Freedom Unlimited
• Chase Business Ink Plus/Cash
• Chase Marriott Cards
• Chase Southwest Cards
• Chase United Cards

Here’s a list of cards NOT affected by Chase 5/24 rule (as of now):

• Chase IHG
• Chase Hyatt
• Chase British Airways
• Chase Disney
• Chase Fairmont
• Chase Amazon
• Chase AARP

I recently took a chance on this rule and applied for the United MileagePlus^® Explorer card (I applied for more than 15 cards in the last 24 months). Now, I didn’t apply blindly just to see what happens with a guaranteed denial. I thought I might have a chance of approval because I applied through a targeted offer from Chase for a 50,000 miles sign-up bonus on the card. However, I got a pending message after I submitted my application with a denial letter shortly after in the mail. I wasn’t too surprised given my knowledge of the Chase 5/24 rule. Here’s the reason given on my denial letter

Bottom Line:

It’s good to learn about this rule early in the game. If you’re currently under 5 cards in the last 24 months, I recommend applying for the Chase Sapphire credit card. Chase Ultimate Rewards points are not my favorite, but they could be very useful with transfer partners such as United, British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Hyatt and more. The bright side to this is that there are still some amazing cards from Chase that are not affected by this rule yet. So to make a long story short, I recommend getting the cards that are affected by the Chase 5/24 rule first then go on to applying for other cards with other banks.

If you have any questions please tweet me @pointspointers or email me at pointspointers@gmail.com or comment below.