Chase, Amex & Citi Enhance Card Benefits: How To Maximize For Gift Cards

Update 6/23/20: One week left to take advantage of most of the Chase spending bonuses.

Update 6/1/20: June’s 3x/5x earnings at grocery stores on Chase cards are now live.

Update 5/24/20: Just a quick reminder that you only have one week left to max out May’s $1,500 spending limit for increased earnings on many different Chase cards.

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Chase, American Express and Citi have all refreshed their card lineups today to offer bonus points and statement credits for different retailers, particularly grocery stores.

I’ll only be covering how these changes can be used for gift cards given the focus of this site, so I recommend clicking through to the various different posts linked to below to find out about other benefits you might be eligible for (e.g. streaming credits).

Note that although some of these benefits have been announced today, some of them don’t come in to force until June.

American Express

See this post on Frequent Miler for full details.

Business Platinum

• Additional $200 in Dell statement credits ($100 for May-June, 2020 & $100 for July-December, 2020)
  • Dell sells some gift cards (not just their own) which might trigger these statement credits. Amex is clawback-happy though, so do this at your own risk.

Hilton Aspire

• $250 resort credit benefit can now also be used at US restaurants for takeout & delivery (June-August, 2020)
  • This will be easy for many people to max out organically. From a gift card perspective though, you should be able to buy gift cards in-restaurant to trigger the statement credits. Be sure to check out our resource listing all current promo card deals for restaurants to stack with that. Again, Amex is clawback-happy, so that’s a risk when buying gift cards.
• 12x Hilton Honors points at US supermarkets (May-July, 2020)
  • This is a sweet deal. The Aspire card usually earns 3x at grocery stores, so this offers 9x bonus points on top. Even better, all these points will be regarded as base points with Hilton towards Elite tier qualification & lifetime Diamond status.
• Weekend free night available any night & valid for 24 months
  • This free night is earned when spending $60,000 on the card in a calendar year. Although this benefit change isn’t specifically gift card related, if you’ll be racking up a ton of points at grocery stores in the next few months, this additional benefit is worth keeping in mind.

Hilton Surpass

• 12x Hilton Honors points at US supermarkets (May-July, 2020)
  • This is effectively the same deal as on the Aspire card, except you’re only earning 6x bonus points seeing as the Surpass card already earns 6x at grocery stores. As with the Aspire card, bonus points earned will count as base points with Hilton towards Elite tier qualification & lifetime Diamond status.
• Weekend free night available any night & valid for 24 months
  • This free night is earned when spending $15,000 on the card in a calendar year. Although this benefit change isn’t specifically gift card related, if you’ll be racking up a ton of points at grocery stores in the next few months, this additional benefit is worth keeping in mind.

Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant

• $300 Marriott statement credit benefit can now also be used at US restaurants for takeout & delivery (June-August, 2020)
  • This is similar to the offer for the Aspire card’s resort credit. Many will be able to max this out organically on dining spend; if not, buy gift cards in-store to get the statement credits. Be sure to check out our resource listing all current promo card deals for restaurants to stack with that. Again, Amex is clawback-happy, so that’s a risk when buying gift cards.
• 6x Marriott Bonvoy points at US supermarkets (May-July, 2020)
  • Unlike the Hilton offers, this has a limit of $7,500 in spend, so a maximum of 45,000 points.

Marriott Bonvoy

• 6x Marriott Bonvoy points at US supermarkets (May-July, 2020)
  • As with the offer on the premium Bonvoy Brilliant card, this has a limit of $7,500 in spend, so a maximum of 45,000 points.

Delta

• 4x Delta SkyMiles at US supermarkets on all Delta consumer cards (May-July, 2020)
  • Note that this is only available on the personal cards rather than business cards. The good thing is that this is available on every Delta consumer card including the no annual fee Delta Blue card.

There’s also an Amex Offer for a 5% statement credit at grocery stores right now. That’s a targeted offer which will stack with the above grocery store bonus point offers if you had the Amex Offer on one of those cards.

Chase

See this post on Frequent Miler for full details.

Chase is offering bonus points at grocery stores on the cards below from May-June, 2020.

• Chase Sapphire Reserve – 5x
• Chase Sapphire Preferred – 3x
• World of Hyatt (new) – 3x
• Hyatt (old) – 3x
• Marriott (all versions) – 6x (Marriott bonuses are available from May-July)
• United Club Infinite – 5x
• United Explorer & other older United cards – 3x
• Southwest Priority- 3x
• Southwest Premier – 3x
• Southwest Plus – 3x
• IHG Premier (new) – 3x
• IHG Select (old) – 3x
• British Airways – 3x
• Iberia – 3x
• Aer Lingus – 3x
• Disney Premier – 3%

Note that each of these cards have a limit of $1,500 for bonused spend per month at grocery stores except for the Marriott cards which have a $5,000 spend limit. While it’s a shame that the spend is capped (whereas Amex’s isn’t), this turns the CSR into a de facto Freedom card for the next few couple of months, but with double the overall spending limit (the Freedom card is earning 5% at grocery stores during Q2).

The World of Hyatt card offers a free category 1-4 certificate when spending $15,000 in a cardholder year, so this can get you 10% 20% of the way there. You can also currently earn 3x elite night credits for every $5,000 of spend, so this will help with that. The points earned on the Southwest cards are Companion Pass-eligible, so that’s an added bonus on those cards.

Citi

See this post on Frequent Miler for more details.

Citi Prestige

• $250 travel credit can be used at supermarkets & restaurants (includes takeout) (May-December, 2020)
  • This will be simple to max out this year. It can be used on gift cards, but I’m sure all of you can spend $250 in the next 8 months at grocery stores and restaurants without needing to resort to that.