Chase Freedom Extends 5x at Costco, Other Wholesale Clubs Through End of Year

by Gary Leff

Costco will start accepting Visa on June 20. The Citi website for the new Costco card will be live at that time.

Historically Costco only accepted American Express cards. You didn’t have to have a Costco American Express, any American Express would do. American Express lost the Costco co-brand to Citibank. Citi will issue Costco Visas, and crucially you will not need a Costco Visa or even Citibank Visa to shop at Costco. Any Visa will do.


    Copyright jetcityimage / 123RF Stock Photo

Chase offered ‘warehouse clubs’ as a 5x earning category in the second quarter for their Freedom product. Clearly Chase wanted to get the message out that you can use their cards at Costco, too. In fact, Chase issues almost exclusively with Visa as a result of a flat rate pricing deal for use of Visa’s network.

However Costco’s transition to Visa took longer than expected, making the second quarter bonus not super useful for that message.

That’s why, according to Chase spokesperson Rob Tacey,

With the Costco credit card acceptance changing to Visa on June 20, including those issued by Chase, Chase Freedom is announcing that it will continue to offer the 5% cash back category of Wholesale Clubs through the end of the year. Chase Freedom cardholders earn 5% cash back each quarter on up to $1,500 in combined purchases from Wholesale Clubs, including Costco®, BJ’s® and Sam’s Club®, and other additional rotating quarterly categories.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Pingbacks

Comments

  1. So, is there any limit for the rest of the year? If you reached the $1,500 in category spend in Q2 do you still get 5% back at Costco in Q3 and Q4?

    A lot more information is required here.

  2. Does this include Costco Gas at 5%?

    Also, Citi’s new Costco Visa, can I change another Citi card to Costco Visa?

  3. “Historically Costco only accepted American Express cards” – not exactly true as before they accepted AMEX they exclusively accepted Discover card (I know because I had a discover card solely to go to Costco). If Quora is to be believed AMEX executed a “coup” codenamed CHECKMATE to take over the relationship from Discover…

  4. @Daniel – it seemed pretty clear to me (but in case I was missing something I checked), each quarter there’s a $1500 cap on 5x earning. Warehouse Clubs inclusive of Costco will be a category for Q3 and Q4. Thus it’s possible to earn the full $1500 at 5x at Costco in Q2 [starting June 20..], Q3, and Q4.

  5. @Daniel – I think the key language is ” Chase Freedom cardholders earn 5% cash back each quarter on up to $1,500 in combined purchases from Wholesale Clubs”. If they have the same category in more than one quarter you can always max out that category in Q2, and then max it out again in Q3 to get the 5% each quarter.

  7. “Wholesale Clubs through the end of the year. Chase Freedom cardholders earn 5% cash back each quarter on up to $1,500 in combined purchases from Wholesale Clubs, including Costco®, BJ’s® and Sam’s Club®, and other additional rotating quarterly categories.”

    Simply put, chase is adding ‘wholesale clubs’ (not the grocery stores) to ‘existing’ categories already announced and to be announced for each of Q3 and Q4.. The max spending $1500 per quarter is not changing. So next quarter, it’s Costco and restaurants for me… up to $1500 in spending.

  8. I realized bunch of people replied while I was taking time to typing mine making mine redundant…

  9. Great news, if the $1500 max spend resets each quarter. Costco is the monkey on my back… 😉

  10. Well… I was excited to apply for this card now. However the date to activate the bonus category is ending today. I won’t have the card in time. I would definitely max out the $1500 per quarter at Costco.

  11. I believe at Sam’s you would need to use the self checkout, since they are wedded to MasterCard.

  12. Note you can buy Costco cash cards on Costco.com if you want to get credit/bonus now for spend later. So each card $1500×3 quarters gets you $225 in UR points or better value to transfer to an air mileage partner if you have Sapphire card.

  13. I had wondered when and if other Visa issuers would have bonuses available with Costco. It happened faster than I thought it would. While Citibank processes the card transactions for Costco, this can’t be very profitable for Citibank. So, how long is Citibank’s contract for Costco?

  14. My Freedom Cards are MasterCards so I can’t use them at Costco B&M. Will the bonus apply if I make purchases at Costco.com?

Comments are closed.