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How to Cash In Points with Chase’s New “Pay Yourself Back” & Why You Might Want To

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Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

Chase recently excited many Sapphire Reserve cardholders and Ultimate Rewards fanboys with the announcement that for a limited time (through September 30, 2020) their points can be cashed out at 1.5 cents each towards grocery store, restaurant and home improvement store purchases. This comes after they made some changes to the card in January and added other card enhancements recently in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

As you might expect this is a deal that has left many Sapphire Reserve cardholders happy. Let’s take a look at how to cash in your points with Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back plus why you might want to do it.

Should You Cash In Points with Pay Yourself Back?

Before we go into the process of how to cash in your Ultimate Rewards points for 1.5 cents per point, let’s talk about if Chase’s temporary pay yourself back feature is a good deal or not. In short, it is a good deal, but not everyone will want to cash in their Ultimate Rewards. Here is a basic explanation of how I see it.

  • Cash in your points if: you have a ton of Ultimate Rewards points, you value cash over premium travel experiences, you often find good cash deals for travel
  • Don’t cash in your points if: you have a limited amount of points, you value premium travel experiences, you have a solid plan for your points where you will receive a higher value, you don’t like cash

For example, I have a lot of Ultimate Rewards points, however I travel a lot and often get much higher than 2 cents per point when redeeming for Hyatt. But, I also find sometimes I get less value and I have redeemed quite a few points through the Chase Travel portal for 1.5 cents each.

Essentially I would be lying if I said I didn’t think 1.5 cents per point cash in your pocket was a bad deal. I have a decent stash and thus will probably cash in some of my points, but I also do value my Hyatt stays and will keep points set aside for that. I think many of you are probably in the same boat. Cash in some and leave some.

How to Use Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

Okay you’ve now decided that you want to cash in your Ultimate Rewards points with Pay Yourself Back! So how do you use Chase Sapphire Reserve’s new cash in your points feature? Let’s take a look at how it works.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

Now, let’s cash in some points! To start, login to your Chase Sapphire Reserve account and click your points balance to go to the Ultimate Rewards site or simply login via UltimateRewards.com. Once logged in locate “Pay Yourself Back” on the menu as shown.

Clicking “Pay Yourself Back” on the Chase Sapphire Reserve menu will bring you to a page that shows all of your eligible grocery, restaurant and home improvement purchases from the past 90 days. Anything in those categories purchased within the past 90 days should qualify. As you can see, in this case I chose to refund my meal at Ronto Roasters in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland on March 8. Oh how I miss Disneyland.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

To choose this transaction for cashback I simply selected the check box to the left as shown above. The site informed me that I could cash in 840 points to receive a $12.60 credit for this purchase.

Once the transaction is selected you can choose to apply points towards the full value of the purchase or a partial value. In this case I chose “Apply Max Value” and cashed in 840 points for a $12.60 statement credit just as expected!

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back – Bottom Line

Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back is a valuable new way to cash in Ultimate Rewards points and will no doubt be popular among Sapphire Reserve cardmembers. I will personally be cashing in more of my points, although I’ll continue to keep some in the bank for future Hyatt stays and other various uses. Either way it’s great to see how easy Chase has made it to turn Ultimate Rewards into cash at a great value.

Have you used Chase Sapphire Reserve pay yourself back? Are you cashing in all of your points? Let us know in the comments!

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomerhttps://milestomemories.com/
Shawn Coomer earns and burns millions of miles/points per year circling the globe with his family. An expert at accumulating travel rewards, he founded Miles to Memories to help others achieve their travel goals for pennies on the dollar. Shawn also runs a million dollar reselling business, knows Vegas better than most and loves to spend his time at the 12 Disney parks across the world.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

7 COMMENTS

  1. This is a great feature to overcome damage done by Covid 19 to travelers with points. I seldom find good deals on transfering points to Airlines anymore, So over the past year I’ve been traveling using Ultimate Rewards travel portal since it gives me the same prices whenever there is an Airline sale or flash sale.. So this year I will cash my points at 1.5 cents and also I will earn UR points when I buy my tickets on Airline website + Airline points

  2. I’m in. I’m a hoarder with 3m+ UR and I’ll at least cash in 200k for the $3k worth of groceries May/June, (plus my minimal normal dining spend).

    Not sure if I want to put some non-bonus spend on the card to cash in more, (but I’ll think about it).

    Sure hope this doesn’t lead Chase to implement their often rumored elimination of points combining from no annual fee cards to annual fee cards.

  3. “Essentially I would be lying if I said I didn’t think 1.5 cents per point cash in your pocket was a bad deal.” Guessing you mean you did think it’s a bad deal?

    By using the points, I assume you forgo the points earnings? If so I should pay for June to earn 5x, then use points July to September, no?

  4. How does this work during the month of June when people are getting 5 points per dollar on their groceries? If you use Pay Yourself Back, then you lose those 5x’s points, correct?

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