JPMorganChase will hike the annual fee on its popular Sapphire Reserve credit card to $795 and launch a similarly priced version for businesses as part of an overhaul marking the biggest U.S. bank’s latest volley in the ultra-competitive world of premium credit cards.
The new fee is an increase for the consumer version, which has been $550 a year since 2020. JPMorgan is also reshaping its rewards for the cards, according to a statement Tuesday, placing more emphasis on the bank’s own travel and dining offerings that it assembled through a series of acquisitions and investments in recent years.
Lenders have been locked in a fierce rewards battle to lure affluent customers for about a decade. American Express said Monday that it is making its “largest investment ever” in a refresh of its travel-focused Platinum cards for consumers and businesses. Capital One Financial has a premium travel card of its own, and Wells Fargo has one in the works, Bloomberg News reported in February.
JPMorgan is adding a slew of annual credits to the Sapphire Reserve card, including $500 toward its “The Edit” collection of hotels and resorts and, for the consumer version, $300 toward exclusive tables on restaurant reservations app OpenTable. An existing $300 travel credit will continue as well.
“It’s the culmination of five years of investment that we’ve made across Chase in completely uplifting and repositioning what we mean for premium travelers in the premium-card space,” Allison Beer, JPMorgan’s head of card and connected commerce, said in an interview. “This is about having the best-in-class travel assets and an end-to-end travel experience.”
Cardholders will earn eight points per dollar spent on Chase Travel, changed from five points per dollar on flights and 10 points on hotels and car rentals. Customers will also get four points per dollar spent on flights and hotels booked directly, up from three points, and three points per dollar spent on dining.
JPMorgan’s latest overhaul incorporates a number of acquisitions it has made over the past half-decade and “connecting all of those investments into a completely new service offering,” Beer said. That includes rewards business cxLoyalty, a deal announced in late 2020; restaurant review platform The Infatuation in 2021; and marketing platform Figg and luxury travel agency Frosch in 2022. The firm has also opened half a dozen airport lounges across the U.S. that cardholders can access, with more planned.
Marianne Lake, head of consumer and community banking, outlined JPMorgan’s vision at the firm’s investor day in 2022. “Travel is at the center of our card business,” she said at the time, adding that the bank would become a full-service travel agency. At this year’s investor day, held last month, Lake said JPMorgan more than doubled its travel volume from 2021 to 2024, and that the business remains “a massive opportunity.”
Half of Chase’s new customers come through the card business, Lake said last month. The Sapphire refresh dovetails with another JPMorgan growth push: wealth management. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon has long sought to expand that business, and in late 2019 created a new unit within the consumer and community bank intended to capture more market share.
“Customers eventually deepen with the rest of the ecosystem, so they start with the Sapphire Reserve card and then they open a self-directed account, or they open a Chase wealth-management account, and they continue to deepen,” Beer said. She joined JPMorgan in 2017 after more than seven years at American Express and rose quickly through the ranks of the consumer business, taking on her current role in 2021.
