Chase Adds Restrictions to Personal Southwest Cards
Chase has added new restrictions to the personal Southwest credit cards, making it harder to qualify for the Companion Pass or get signup bonuses. Both personal Southwest cards will now be considered part of the same family and will have restrictions similar to the Sapphire cards. Here’s the new language that now present on the the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card and Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card.
The product is not available to either:
- (i) current Cardmembers of any Southwest Rapids Rewards® Credit Card, or
- (ii) previous Cardmembers of any Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Card who received a new Cardmember bonus within the last 24 months. This does not apply to Cardmembers of the Southwest Rapid Rewards Business Card and Employee Credit Card products.
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Getting the Southwest Companion Pass
Being able to get the bonus on both of this cards would usually get you the 110,000 Southwest points needed for the Companion Pass. The cards often have bonus of 50,0000 to 60,000 points. With this new language you can only qualify for one of these cards every 24 months, making it impossible to get the Companion Pass, at least through the signup bonuses alone.
There’s another avenue though still available. Chase also offers a Southwest Rapid Rewards Business Credit Card. Business cards are not part of this 24 months restriction. So you can get a personal card and a business card to work your way towards the Companion Pass.
Conclusion
This new Chase Southwest restriction is bad news for those aiming for the Southwest Companion Pass. It wasn’t unexpected, as it just bring it inline with the Sapphire restrictions and we should probably expect the same to happen to IHG cards in the future. There’s an option left at least with the business card route. Just keep in mind that both personal and business Southwest cards fall under the Chase 5/24 rule so you will not be approved if you’ve had more than any 5 new credit cards in the last two years.
HT: TPG
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This just changed today or earlier? I just applied last week…
Just now – you should be good
If you have both personal cards already, are you still able to keep them both?
Rick: They will never take away a card you already have, as long as you do nothing wrong. So, yeah, as long as you choose to keep both cards, they are both yours. You now have something that anybody who comes after you will probably never manage 🙂
But they’re all under 5/24, so who cares. It won’t make a difference for repeat churners, and first-time churners can still get around this by doing personal + biz, then having the companion do the same two years later. They’d need to start making restrictions family-wide to have a real effect