The latest cut is the loss of the 10% anniversary bonus perk on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card as Chase keeps trimming spend on benefits.

Chase Sapphire Preferred losing the 10% anniversary bonus perk

As flagged by Doctor of Credit, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is losing one of its benefits:

The Anniversary Bonus is retiring. You will continue to earn 10% of your spend through 10/1/26.

This anniversary bonus perk gave an extra 10% bonus on top of the base spend you had throughout the year. It didn’t stack on top of bonus multipliers or sign-up/retention bonuses. In effect, you could have thought of the card as a 1.1x everywhere card. It likely didn’t motivate people to spend on their Chase Sapphire Preferred since the Freedom Unlimited gets you 1.5x everywhere. But for those of us looking to get extra benefits from travel protections on the Sapphire Preferred, it was a nice bonus.

Back in the day, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card launched with a 7% points dividend. This dividend was different in that stacked on top of bonus multipliers. At the time, dining would have earned you 2.14x points instead of just 2x points. But when it launched in 2011, there wasn’t much competition in the points-earning world and so it felt more substantial.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee. But with the removal of this benefit on October 1st, 2026, there is no offset to the annual fee. Unfortunately, nor is there any extra benefit to replace it. They might still make other tweaks to the card, but nothing additional is announced for now.

The math doesn’t change for us on this card

Yes, losing 0.1x points isn’t great and is clearly a worse benefit than what we get now. But we don’t have the card because we love the points-earning rate. That hasn’t been the value proposition since 2016 or so when the Chase Sapphire Reserve launched. Cheaper credit cards like the Chase Freedom, Freedom Flex, and Freedom Unlimited have a better earn rate than the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

What the Chase Sapphire Preferred does well is with its other benefits:

• The ability to transfer points from the Freedom, Freedom Flex, and Freedom Unlimited to partner programs.
• The travel protections, which rank among the best despite its $99 annual fee

For anyone looking just to have a card that provides excellent insurance and protections even on award flights, this card can’t be beat at its price point. We would argue it’s far superior to the Chase Sapphire Reserve when considering that card has a $795 annual fee.

But aside from using it for our travel, we otherwise place the card in our sock drawer. Losing the 10% anniversary bonus perk won’t change how we use the card.

Chase seems to keep making cuts and this is just the latest example

Chase used to have the edge on any other credit card issuer in the points world. Everyone seemed to want a Chase card, in part because they were so churnable before. However, the game changed significantly in the past year or so.

• Chase now has a “pop-up jail” methodology that determines whether you get a sign-up bonus or not. The good news is you can now get a card without a bonus when they wouldn’t even issue it before. The bad news is that it’s unclear what methodology they’re using.
  
• Even American Express will have “no lifetime limit” offers for cards that will bypass some of the restrictions for those getting a card they had before. Chase has no such offer that bypasses restrictions for those who once had the card. If you had the card once, Chase doesn’t consider you worthwhile to come back.
  
• Chase Ultimate Rewards points used to be worth 1.5 cents apiece towards travel with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, but after the relaunch of the card with its new $795 fee, it’s down to just 1.25 cents apiece. That’s a material reduction in value.
  
• To compensate, Chase Ultimate Rewards points used at The Edit hotels would be worth 2 cents each with the relaunch of that card, but Chase quietly changed the language to just “up to” 2 cents each.

On top of all of this, one of Chase’s key transfer partners, World of Hyatt, has a massive devaluation hitting May 20, 2026. It wouldn’t be a surprise to us that a substantial number of Hyatt points come from Chase transfers. So when devaluations hit the loyalty program, there’s likely decreased activity with transfers to that loyalty program. Why commit more of your Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt when you can instead use them at a different partner? Or, if you really only wanted to quickly amass Hyatt points with these Chase cards, your demand for Chase cards will take a hit.

This line of thinking probably deserves its own post, as there are a lot of layers in the onion to peel away. Bottom line: Chase keeps making cuts and it has been a long time since they’ve made news in a positive way.

Are you going to miss the Chase Sapphire Preferred 10% anniversary bonus perk?