Chase Currently Limiting Points Transfers for New Cards

The Chase Ultimate Rewards program is one of the best out there. One of the reasons is because you can easily pool points between your accounts and even household members. That means that you can earns 5X on a quarterly category with your Freedom Flex card for example, and then transfer those points to a household member that has a Chase Sapphire Reserve card so he can redeem at 1.5 cents per point.

But now Doctor of Credit reports that Chase is limiting the transfer option, at least online. If you log in and go to the Combine Points section of your account, you will see the option to transfer points to current household members that you have already added, but you can’t add new members’ cards. The “Add Household Member” button is no longer there. It’s not clear if this is a new Chase rule, or just a glitch, but I’m leaning towards the latter for a few reasons.

The first is that they are still allowing you to transfer to family members that you have already added as transfer options. If they did change the rule, they would have stopped it completely. Then a comment on DoC’s article says that it’s possible to just call and still have then add a member’s card as a new transfer option, and then transfer points and usual. And last but not least, the terms on the points transfer page have not changed. It still notes the following:

You can move your points, but only to another Chase card with Ultimate Rewards belonging to you, or one member of your household or owner of the company, as applicable.

Update: Once you call in to make a transfer to a card that is not listed as a transfer option, that card will then be added online going forward. So if you are transferring points to that same family member in the future, you can do so online.

Guru’s Wrap-up

This is likely, and hopefully just a glitch. And even if it not, you will still be able to transfer points to a household member by adding them to your account as an authorized user. Or you can just play it safe and transfer points now to a household member that has a Chase Sapphire Reserve card.