Generate A Steady Stream of Free Travel
How to generate up to $2,549.75 each year to spend on travel.
Venmo codes as a bonus category on Chase Ink Preferred, which means you earn 3x points on Venmo transactions. However, Venmo charges a 3% fee on credit card transactions. Seems like it should cancel out but when you redeem points through the Chase Travel portal, you get 1.25–1.5x the points value redeemed (depending on which card you have).
What you need:
- Chase Ink Preferred
- Venmo account
- A partner with a Venmo account
- Bonus: Chase Sapphire Reserve for increased point value
Set your CIP as the default Venmo payment method and make sure your partner is ready to receive a large payment from Venmo. Note: Venmo can only link to a bank account once, so you cannot both have the same bank account linked to 2 separate Venmo accounts.
Send a payment of up to $2,999 to your partner. Venmo has a weekly transfer limit of $2,999, so that is the upper limit to how much you can use this method.
It helps if you slowly ramp this up as there have been reports of Venmo shutdowns if you try this with brand new accounts.
This is a rolling weekly limit so your transaction will be denied if you are 1 minute early in your weekly transaction. Set a reminder in your phone’s reminder app to do this at the correct time every week.
Each week, a $2,999 Venmo transfer (with 3% fee) will put $3,088.97 on your credit card, earning 9,266.91 UR points.
The value of these points varies based on whether you have a CSR or not:
Once you subtract the fee, you earn between $25-$49 in free travel dollars each week. If you remember to do that each week, that’s up to $2,549.75 in free travel each year.
One other limitation: Your credit limit. Business cards are often approved for $5,000-$10,000 limits which sets another max value on how much you can use this trick. However, you can always refer yourself to a second CIP.
As with all things churning, this could vanish at any time and it’s important to check online banking to confirm Venmo continues to code at 3x.
