The Southwest Rapid Rewards® credit card welcome bonus mentioned below is no longer available.
In the spirit of holiday promotions, Chase released a new welcome bonus for its consumer Southwest Rapid Rewards® credit cards that's worth up to 80,000 points.
This new offer marks a record high and is double the old bonus. Plus, it gets you more than halfway to earning the 125,000 points needed for a coveted Southwest Companion Pass, which allows you to choose one person to fly with you, free of airline charges (you still need to pay taxes and fees).
Eligible cards include: Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card and Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card (which is our top choice for Southwest in our roundup of the best airline credit cards).
Here's how you can earn the new bonus and benefit from extra rewards on Southwest purchases.
How to earn 80,000 bonus points with Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards
The new Southwest Rapid Rewards bonus is two-tier, so you'll need to meet both spending thresholds in order to earn the full 80,000 points. Here are the terms:
- Earn 50,000 points after you spend $2,000 on purchases in the first three months your account is open.
- Earn an additional 30,000 points after you spend $10,000 on purchases in the first nine months your account is open.
You'll need to spend a total of $10,000 within the first nine month from account opening to earn the full 80,000 bonus points. If that's outside your budget, you have the flexibility to still earn 50,000 bonus points after spending $2,000 on purchases within the first three months. It's not worth taking on debt to earn rewards, even if you have to forgo the additional 30,000 bonus points.
The old offer only gave new cardholders a chance to earn 40,000 points after spending $1,000 in purchases in the first three months from account opening.
In addition to a massive welcome bonus, you can earn 5X points per $1 spent on Southwest purchases, up to $2,000 per month between December 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. Outside of this promotion, cardholders earn 2X points per dollar spent on Southwest purchases. The added value on Southwest transactions only applies to new applicants approved between December 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021.
Who's eligible for the new Southwest Rapid Rewards card bonus?
Prospective Southwest Rapid Rewards cardmembers will need to meet Chase's strict eligibility requirements in order to qualify for the welcome bonus. If you've never had any Southwest Rapid Rewards card, you can take advantage of this bonus offer.
Chase includes the following eligibility requirements on its website:
The product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of any Southwest Rapid 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.
While Southwest Rapid Rewards newbies can earn the welcome bonus, former Southwest Rapid Rewards cardholders can as well so long as they haven't received a new cardmember bonus for any Southwest Rapid Rewards card in the past 24 months.
