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The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is Chase’s super-simple business card (in some ways this is the business version of the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card) and it’s currently promoting the best welcome bonus that we’ve ever seen it offer. That alone makes it worth giving this card a closer look.
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card
In brief
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is a $0 annual fee business credit card that earns a flat rate of cash back (or, in the right circumstances, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points) on every purchase, with no bonus categories to track. Its welcome offer is excellent, but as we’ll explain, the ongoing earning rate is beaten by a number of cards, including one from Chase’s own lineup.
In detail
Here’s what you need to know about the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card:
Annual fee:
$0 (zero)
Cost of employee cards:
$0 (zero)
Current welcome offer:
Earn $1,000 cash back (or 100,000 Ultimate Rewards Points*) after spending $8,000 on purchases in the first 4 months from account opening (terms apply)
Note: This bonus may not be available if you have ever held this card, or any other Chase for Business card that doesn’t charge an annual fee. Chase may also consider factors relating to your business when determining eligibility.
Earnings:
- 5.0% cash back (or 5 points/dollar) on Lyft rides booked through the Lyft app (through 30 September 2027)
- 1.5% cash back (or 1.5 points/dollar) on all other eligible spending
Note: This card charges a 3% foreign transaction fee, so it isn’t a card you should be using outside the US.
Key benefits:
- $0 annual fee.
- Earn valuable Ultimate Rewards Points in place of cash back when this card is paired with a Chase Sapphire Card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card.
- Primary rental collision cover when renting for business purposes, up to $60,000, on most vehicles with an MSRP of $125,000 or less.
- Complimentary Instacart+ membership for 3 months (activate by 31 December 2027), plus a $20 monthly credit in the Instacart app for as long as your Instacart+ membership stays active.
- 120-day purchase protection – up to $10,000 per item against damage or theft. (New York residents get 90 days, not 120 days cover.)
- Extended warranty protection – this extends the time period of the U.S. manufacturer’s warranty by an additional year, on eligible warranties of three years or less.
Note: Unlike the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card, this card does not offer trip cancellation or interruption insurance.
How Chase pays out cash back
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is, at its core, a cash back credit card, but Chase pays cash back in the form of points which cardholders can exchange for statement credits at a rate of 1 point = 1 cent.
As I’ll show a little later in this article, under the right conditions, the points that this card earns can be used for more than cash back.
Why you might want this card
An excellent welcome offer
$1,000 back for $8,000 of spending in 4 months is a 12.5% rate of return on the required spending, and that’s from a card that charges nothing to hold. As welcome offers on no-annual-fee cards go, that’s about as good as it gets.
This is also a limited-time offer, up from the $750 that Chase has been offering, and it’s the highest welcome bonus we’ve seen on this card. Chase hasn’t said when it ends, so if you want it, I wouldn’t wait around.
It gets better if you hold one of the Chase Sapphire cards or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, because the $1,000 cash back can be taken as 100,000 Ultimate Rewards Points instead.
Here at TFM, we value Ultimate Rewards points at 1.5 cents each, so to us, that puts the value of this welcome offer at $1,500. That’s a very impressive 18.75% return on the required spending.
Be aware, however, that there are limits to who can earn the welcome bonus.
Chase says that this bonus may not be available to you if you have ever held this card, or any other Chase for Business card that doesn’t charge an annual fee, so, as the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card also carries a $0 annual fee, if you hold that card now or have held it in the past, you probably won’t be eligible for the welcome offer.
Importantly, this restriction only applies to Chase business cards that don’t charge an annual fee. Chase consumer cards that don’t come with an annual fee will not rule you out and if you hold the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card (which charges $95/year), that won’t disqualify you from this bonus either.
A simple card that gets better when you pair it
There’s something to be said for a very simple card. There are no bonus categories to keep track of, no quarterly activations to remember, and no annual fee to justify. You put your business spending on the card, you earn 1.5% back on all of it, and that’s it.
If you’re a fan of pure cash back, that will work perfectly well for you. But this can also be a very good card for anyone who loves earning a valuable rewards currency and who is happy to put in a bit of extra work to maximize the value that the card offers.
When held alongside a Chase Sapphire Card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, the cash back that the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card offers can be taken in the form of Ultimate Rewards Points.
These points can be transferred to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs where they can be used to extract considerably more value than the basic cash back that the card offers.
We value Chase Ultimate Rewards Points at 1.5 cents each (based on the value we know we can get out of each point with relative ease), which gives this card an effective rebate of 2.25% on all eligible spending.
Primary rental cover for business rentals
When you rent a car for business purposes, decline the rental company’s collision insurance, and pay for the rental in full with this card, you get primary collision cover of up to $60,000 on most vehicles with an MSRP of $125,000 or less.
That’s great cover from a card that doesn’t charge an annual fee and it’s a key difference between this card and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card which only offers secondary cover in the US.
Secondary cover means that in the case of an incident, you would have to claim on your own insurance first and only then turn to Chase for whatever is left. Primary cover means you can go straight to Chase and leave your personal auto insurance out of things entirely.
$0 annual fee
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card doesn’t charge an annual fee, and employee cards cost $0 to hold too, so you can hand cards to your team without the costs mounting up.
Why you may not want to keep this card
The earning rate is solid, but it isn’t class-leading
1.5% cash back on all eligible spending is a reasonable rate for a business card if you’re spending in categories where other cards don’t offer a bonus, but here’s the problem:
The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express earns 2 points/dollar on up to $50,000 of spending each calendar year (1 point/dollar after that) and because we also value American Express Membership Rewards points at 1.5 cents each, that makes this an effective rebate of 3% on the first $50,000 you spend each year.
That’s a better return than the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card offers, from another business card that also comes with a $0 annual fee.
In fairness, that $50,000 cap is a real one. Once you pass it, the Amex card’s earnings rate drops to 1 point/dollar (an effective rebate of 1.5%), and at that point the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card’s 1.5 points/dollar (an effective rebate of 2.25%) pulls comfortably ahead.
If your business spends more than $50,000 a year on unbonused purchases, you may want to consider holding both cards or checking if Amex will let you have a second Blue Business® Plus Credit Card.
The fact is, however, that if you’re a small business that’s unlikely to put $50,000 of eligible (and otherwise unbonused) spending on your card, the Amex card is clearly the better earner.
Chase’s own consumer card earns more
The comparison that creates an issue is with the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card, which we reviewed here.
Both cards earn 1.5% on unbonused spending, so on that front they’re identical. But the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card adds 3% on dining, 3% at drugstores, and 5% on travel booked through Chase Travel℠ on top of that flat rate, and the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card can’t match any of that.
The one place the Ink card wins is when it comes to Lyft spending as that’s where it earns 5% against the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card’s 2%. If Lyft is a meaningful part of your spending, that’s worth considering, but for most people, it won’t be.
What this means is that unless you specifically need a business card, or you want that primary rental cover without having to pay an annual fee, the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card will probably be the better option as it will earn you more Ultimate Rewards Points for the same spending.
The Instacart benefit comes with strings
On the face of it, the Instacart perk is generous. You get 3 months of complimentary Instacart+ membership, and while that membership stays active you get a $20 credit in the Instacart app every month, which runs through 31 December 2027. If you’re a regular Instacart user, that’s up to $240 a year, and that’s very clearly worth having.
But read the terms. After the 3 complimentary months are up, you’re automatically enrolled in a paid Instacart+ membership at $99/year unless you cancel. And if you do cancel, the $20 monthly credit stops, because it only applies while your Instacart+ membership is active.
So the benefit can be useful, but it’s conditional. Keep the membership and you’re paying $99/year for up to $240 of credits, which is still great if you actually use Instacart every month. Ignore it and you’ll be billed $99 for a membership you probably don’t need.
Set a reminder for the end of month three and cancel the membership if you don’t think you’ll use it enough to get your money back.
A further negative thing to note
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card charges a 3% foreign transaction fee (just as the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card does) and while this doesn’t make it a bad card, it does mean that it’s a card you should be leaving at home when you travel.
Bottom line
The welcome offer on the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is excellent. $1,000 cash back, or 100,000 Ultimate Rewards Points worth $1,500 by our valuation, for $8,000 of spending across 4 months is a return that, very few no-annual-fee cards have matched.
If you have a business, you can hit that spending target, and you haven’t held a no-fee Chase business card before, this is a card worth getting for the bonus alone.
Add the primary rental cover for business rentals and the $0 annual fee, and there’s an argument to be made that this card could be a useful low-cost addition to your wallet.
Unfortunately, the ongoing earning rate is where things look less rosy.
The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express pays a better rate on your first $50,000 of annual spending, and Chase’s own Chase Freedom Unlimited® card matches the flat 1.5% while adding bonus categories the Ink card simply doesn’t have.
If your business spends heavily enough to blow past that $50,000 Amex cap, this card has a place in your wallet alongside the Amex. If it doesn’t, it probably doesn’t.
Put simply, for a lot of people this is a card to apply for, collect the welcome bonus on, and then think carefully about. The great welcome bonus probably earns this card a place in your wallet for a year, but whether it deserves to stay there past year one is a different question, and for most people, the answer is probably not.
