What's Going On With Chase Ink Approvals in 2026

Why Chase Ink Rumors Spread

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If you've been avoiding applying for an Chase Ink card because you heard there's lifetime language, or if you've recently heard Chase is dead and that you won't be able to get any Chase cards anytime soon, this episode is for you. I'm hearing a lot of assertions repeated online that are half truths, and it's leading to a lot of confusion. So what I want to go into today is the actual data points I'm seeing for Chase inks and approvals, so you can know what that means for you. I truly believe this isn't as bad as people are making it out to be, but there certainly have been changes in the past 12 months. Welcome back to Points for Normal People. I'm Katie and I'm here because I know that travel costs add up, especially for a family. But I believe travel isn't just for the rich. That's why on Points for Normal People I share the tips and tricks that my family has been using for over a decade to help you use your everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your travel points so that you can pay for entire vacations every year. A quick note before we get into this: I am not fully back with the podcast yet, and you won't see another podcast episode in two weeks. I still have Tunnel Vision finishing some very extensive updates to my site. I'm also fully updating my free course, and we just released a fully updated Southwest Bootcamp course. But there are some elevated and highest ever ink offers right now, and so I think it's worth understanding this while these offers are still going. So first let me say my official disclosure, which is that the content in this video is accurate as of the posting date of this video. However, some of the offers mentioned may be expired or no longer be available. I'm not going into the specific offer details, but the information on all the ink cards will be linked in the show notes. Elevated offers come through usually about once a year on these cards, and even the standard offers are very strong offers. So this is good info to have no matter your situation and no matter when you listen to this. Now, this episode is going to jump in with more intermediate knowledge. So if you feel a little confused, don't worry. Just go back to season one, episode one, and start from there to make sure you understand all the basics.

The New Ink Bonus Language

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Let's start today with a thing that changed most recently, but it actually changed almost a year ago. So back in November of 2025, Chase added a line to the application terms on two cards, the Chase Inc Business Cash and the Chase Inc. Business Unlimited. The exact wording is the new card member bonus may not be available to you if you have ever had this card or any other Chase for Business card without an annual fee. So before November 2025, these cards had separate eligibility buckets. You could get the cash and you could get the unlimited, each with its own welcome offer. Now it's more vague and says having ever had one of them may block a bonus on the other. People immediately started calling this lifetime language. And I've explained in previous episodes that I think that this is a misnomer, because the language is deliberately vague. Lifetime in credit card terms almost never means your entire life. We've seen that for years with American Express, where language like this in practice means you have to wait seven years. Now, seven years is still a long time, but it's not a lifetime. And we've also seen with Amex, time and again, that they offer certain card offers to the same people who already have had that card, and those same people often get approved in less than seven years. So I'm less concerned with what the language says than what the actual data points show. In addition to this, about a year and a half ago, we noticed it was getting harder for a lot of people to get approved for Chase business cards, almost a full year before this language rolled out on the ink cards. So at that time, I ran a survey with some of my other friends, and we got a lot of data points to try to help us understand

LLC Vs Sole Proprietor Approvals

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what was happening, what had changed. So what we saw at that time was that the data really showed Chase has a strong preference for LLCs and corporations over sole proprietors. In the simplest terms, what it showed was that if someone had three or more Chase business cards and applied for another one, if they had an LLC or corporation, they had a pretty good chance of getting approved. If they had a sole proprietorship, it was very hard to get approved at that point. With three or more Chase business cards, approval rates were about 10% for another Chase business card for sole proprietors. And to be clear, this is about all Chase business cards, not just the inks, and it includes all the co-branded cards as well. And to be honest, that makes sense to me. If I'm Chase trying to sort out which applicants are less risky, a registered LLC or corporation is a different profile risk than somebody who sold a few things on Poshmark last year. We've also seen this in the past. In 2020, during the pandemic, it became a lot harder to get approved as a sole proprietorship for Chase Ink cards. This was, of course, during uncertain economic times and was one of the things that finally made me get my button gear to get an LLC for our rental properties, which our CPA had been suggesting to us for years. Once I got that LLC, voila, I was able to get approved again for an ink card. So I think we're seeing this same general idea playing out again. Since about March of this year, I've been watching data points on who's actually getting approved for ink cards. Specifically, I'm looking at people who have had one previously, so in the past they already had one. If you're applying as a sole proprietor and you've had one of these no annual fee ink cards before, we're seeing basically no approvals for another no fee ink. I might have seen one or two, but I'd consider them very strong outliers. It doesn't matter if you use an EIN, if you're a sole proprietor, it's extremely unlikely to get approved again. But if you have a registered LLC or a corporation like an S-core or a C Core, we are seeing people get approved again and still getting the bonus, even if they've had an ink card before. I want to be really precise about this because I've heard people saying you just need an EIN. And that's just not true. Plenty of sole proprietors have an EIN. You can go get one for a sole proprietorship in about 10 minutes. It's the business type and also having an EIN that seems to make the difference. And again, this makes sense to me. Chase understands that people might have more than one LLC or corporation, and you need to keep your business expenses separate. Creating an LLC or S-core takes time and effort, and you have to file annual reports, so there's more of a barrier to entry there. Of course, these are just data points and analysis. Chase hasn't told me any of this, but I'm using my brain power to analyze and figure out what's going on and to make some really educated guesses. So, what does this mean for you and a long-term strategy? First of all, if you have an LLC or corporation, it's good news for you. It means you still have a path to opening ink cards, and data points indicate it's going to be a lot easier for you to get approved. I have an LLC and I just got approved for my fifth Chase business card. It wasn't an ink, actually, it was a United card, but it was auto-approved, even as my fifth card. Even if you have previously held no fee ink cards, we're seeing approvals. If you have previously applied for no fee ink cards as a sole proprietorship, though, it's a bit different. Again, we aren't seeing those additional approvals come through. You do have a few possibilities still though. First, for sole proprietors, keep in mind you still have other Chase business cards that you'll be eligible for. But keep in mind that upward limit. If you already have three Chase business cards, it's going to be harder to get approved. If you've had the no-fee ink cards, you're still eligible for the Chase Inc. Business Preferred Credit Card, as well as the Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. The eligibility for each of those cards is independent. Now both have larger minimum spend requirements generally, but if you can time opening one for when you have bigger expenses, it might make sense. And then for some people, depending on your state, this might be the thing that makes you sit down and finally do that LLC paperwork you've been meaning to do. The cost to incorporate an LLC really varies by state. And by no means do I think you should just do this to open new credit cards. But if you've been considering officially registering as an LLC or corporation, this just becomes another perk. So I have a friend who had been putting this off for a long time and finally went through this process. In Georgia, where she lives, it cost, I believe, $100 for her to file that paperwork. So she filed the paperwork and was really quickly approved. After she got approved, she went ahead and applied for an ink card and she got approved. She previously had had other ink cards for Souls proprietorships and had even tried to apply a few months ago again and got the pop-up saying she wouldn't be approved, but then once she was an LLC, she was approved. Again, by state, it really varies. I believe in California it can be over $700 to incorporate an LLC. Some states it might be as low as $50. And then you will usually have to file an annual report that has some fee associated with it as well. I

Sapphire Lifetime Data And Pop-Ups

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also want to say a brief word about the lifetime language on the Sapphire cards. I've talked about this already in previous episodes, but this summer we saw a few more data points on how this is playing out. So as a quick refresher, in June of 2025, Chase dropped the rule that you could only hold one sapphire card at a time. And then on January 22nd, 2026, Chase made the bonuses independent as well. So you get one bonus per Sapphire card as long as you've never earned a bonus on that specific card. Again, with this, I've been wondering what is a lifetime to Chase? Again, so we know it's seven years for Amex, and we now have some data points that are starting to trickle in. I went through every data point I could find on this between forums like Reddit and Doctor of Credit comments, and then other blog posts that I could find. And I sorted them by two factors. How long it had been since that person actually held a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, and how long it had been since they earned a bonus on it. The main pattern I saw was that the bigger factor was how long it had been since someone had had a Chase Sapphire Preferred. Now, of course, that relates to how long since they had a bonus, but it's not the same. So what I'm seeing so far is that once eight years or more have passed since you held one, the odds are pretty decent. This is still a very small data set, but we did see 10 approvals and two denials for people who had eight years or more ago closed or downgraded their Chase Sapphire Preferred. If it was under eight years since you held a Sapphire Preferred, a few people still got approved. I found five approvals of people who had not had a Sapphire Preferred in about the past four years. But there were many, many more denials. There's still a big safety net built into the application where if you go to apply and you're one of these fringe cases and you're just wondering if you're still eligible in the eyes of Chase, when you go to submit an application, if Chase doesn't think you're eligible, they will actually give you a pop-up that says exactly that, and you can close out your application without a credit check.

Targeted Offers And Real Risks

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One more thing I want to draw attention to is targeted Chase offers. If you go into your Chase account and you go into more and then open an account and then select credit cards, sometimes you'll see targeted offers. Some people are seeing what look like pre-approved offers of 125,000 or even 175,000 points on some of the Sapphire cards. Some people are seeing ink offers that use language like pre-approved or you're already approved. So I do think it's worth checking to see if you have anything that looks like that in your Chase account. I personally did not have any when I checked my account, but you might. But I also want to give you a word of caution from what I'm seeing that these aren't true pre-approved offers. So one of my friends had an offer that clearly said, you're already approved, and she filled out the application for an ink card, didn't get a pop-up, and was ultimately denied for the card. So I'd say take that language of being already approved with a grain of salt.

Action Steps And Next Moves

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A few quick action steps for you today. First, make sure you know your count of Chase business cards. Go to your account and count them. If you're a sole proprietorship and you already have three or more, know that it's going to be harder to get approved. Again, I'm talking about all Chase business cards, inks and co-branded cards like United or Hyatt cards. If you have three or more, I'd encourage you to do an audit and see if they are all still cards that are working well for you. Make sure that they're still worth holding long term for you. Next, if you have an LLC or corporation and you've been avoiding Chase because of what you've heard, this is a great window to think about applying. Keep in mind that the referral rules did change last year as well. So let's say you're a two-person household like us. Micah and I both have ink cards already. If I go to apply for another ink card, let's say this time for Katie's travel tricks and not our rental property business, I can't use Micah's referral link. Well, I could use it, but he won't get any referral points because I'm already a Chase for Business customer. So if you're in that situation and decide to apply for a new card, I do appreciate it so much when you use my affiliate link. Because as you know, if you've been around here, that's what allows me to keep all of my resources 100% free. And then the last thing is just to think about it. If you're a sole proprietorship but you've been thinking about incorporating as an LLC, I'd encourage you to just check into regulations in your state, get a sense for what it costs and what the requirements are annually. Maybe talk to a CPA or somebody else that can help you decide if that makes sense for your business. And maybe this is something that becomes the impetus for you checking that thing off your list that you've been meaning to do for

Final Takeaways And Thanks

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a while. Thanks so much for listening today, and I look forward to seeing you next time where we will continue to unlock these secrets of travel points together.