Chase offers two no annual fee cards in its excellent collection of Ink business cards: the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card and the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card. On paper the two look nearly identical, with the same annual fee (none), the same welcome bonus, and the same trick for turning cash back into Ultimate Rewards points. The real difference is how each card earns rewards, and that’s where the choice gets interesting.
I personally have both cards, and in my wallet they aren’t competitors so much as two halves of the same strategy. Still, if I were starting from scratch and could only pick one, the decision would come down to a few specific questions about where my spending actually goes. Deciding between the two is also more relevant than in the past, given that nowadays you can typically only earn the welcome bonus on one card or the other, and that’s definitely a major motivator in applying for cards.
The Ink Cash wins if your business spends meaningfully on internet, phone services, cable, or office supplies, since 5x points earning on a no annual fee card is unmatched. The Ink Unlimited wins if your spending is spread across lots of categories, since 1.5x points on everything beats the Ink Cash’s 1x points base rate. Personally, the Ink Cash gets my monthly phone bill and office supply spending, while I don’t spend much on the Ink Unlimited, but that’s not to say it doesn’t make sense for others.
In this post, I’d like to walk through the math behind that, plus talk about an eligibility wrinkle you should understand before applying for either card.
Links: Learn more about the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card and Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card, each with a $1,000 welcome bonus
In this post:
Getting a bonus this huge on a no annual fee card is quite literally unheard of. While the welcome bonuses are marketed as offering cash back, in conjunction with the right cards, these can be turned into full Ultimate Rewards points, and I value those at 1.7 cents each. So I’d consider each of these cards to have a bonus worth a staggering $1,700. That’s unbelievable for a no annual fee card.
No annual fee on either card
Getting a no annual fee card that’s super rewarding is rare, especially when you consider the value of the welcome bonus. That applies equally to both cards here. The Ink Business Cash and Ink Business Unlimited are cards that you can keep long term, and they won’t cost you anything.
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