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Comment by lastofthemojito | Hacker News Reader

So what's the deal with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card he mentions almost everyone having? I don't shop for credit cards often and when I Google it I see it's myriad of rules for points and perks, but nothing really jumped out at me as the killer feature that would lead to that sort of adoption.

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When it came out, its signup bonus was quite generous, and its points could be redeemed for a lot of value if you used them right (travel). It's less generous now, but still pretty solid.

The big one is that points can be used for 1.5x travel or something like that. So 100 points buys $1.50 of travel, which can add up pretty quickly. The signup bonus was worth something like $1200. And its 'better than normal' categories fit well with professionals in cities who eat out a lot, with a high point-accumulation from that use.

I think their point was that it was the first card of its kind outside of American Express. Back in 2016 there wasn't anything else really like it other than Amex's high tier cards. It also had a really generous sign up bonus when they first released it, 100,000 points if you spent a certain amount on the card in the first few months. Since then other issuers have been playing catch-up so the CSR stands out less.

An article from 2016:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-02/chase-sap...

(Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/vba5Y)

The rewards seem fairly normal these days, what with rewards inflation happening. Some cards now are offering 250k rewards points as a sign up bonus.

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