Earn Up to 120K Points (& a Companion Pass) With New Southwest Business Card Offers!

Chase just rolled out exciting new offers on its pair of Southwest co-branded business credit cards. With these limited-time bonuses, you can earn up to 120,000 Rapid Rewards points and get an easy path to earning a Southwest Companion Pass! 

Worried about whether or not you’ll qualify for a business credit card? You might be surprised to learn just what the banks consider a small business. Odds are, if you’ve got a side hustle, do consulting work, or even just buy and sell items on eBay or Facebook Marketplace, your business would qualify.

So what’s the Southwest Companion Pass? Oh, just one of the best deals in all of travel. With the Southwest Companion Pass, you get to choose one person to fly free with you every time you buy a flight or redeem Southwest Rapid Rewards points. No blackout dates and no questions asked: If the flight is bookable, you can add your companion. 

Here’s how these bonuses work – and how it can help you earn a Companion Pass: 

With these tiered bonuses, you can earn up to 120,000 points by spending a total of $15,000 in the first nine months of card membership. By the time you met the minimum spending requirement for the full bonus, you’d have all the points needed … even without stepping foot on a Southwest plane. Add in the 10,000 Companion Pass qualifying points that you get just for being a cardholder and you’re in even better shape. 

But there is a catch here: You’ll need to be sure to earn all those points in 2024 to earn the Companion Pass. So while you have up to nine months to meet the minimum spending requirement, you’re going to want to get it done sooner. And since you don’t actually get those points every time you make a purchase, you’ll need to be sure you’ve spent that amount by the time your December credit card statement is generated.

Still, if you apply right away, that should leave you with more than five months to get it done – and the sooner you earn your Companion Pass, the sooner you can start using it for BOGO free travel! 

Beyond the bonus points and opportunity to get a coveted Companion Pass, these cards come with other benefits like anniversary bonus points, early bird check-ins, upgraded boardings, and a discount on in-flight purchases.

Keep reading for everything you need to know about these Southwest credit card offers.

The Southwest Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Card

• Welcome Offer: bonus_miles_full
• Anniversary Bonus: Each year on your cardmember anniversary, you will receive 9,000 Rapid Rewards points.
• Get 10,000 bonus points toward earning the Companion Pass: Southwest will deposit 10,000 Companion Pass-qualifying points in your account at the start of each calendar year.
• Earn 4x Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent on Southwest purchases.
• Earn 3x Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent on Rapid Rewards^® hotels and car rental partner purchases.
• Earn 2x Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent on social media and search engine advertising, internet, cable, and phone services; local transit and commuting (including rideshare).
• Earn 1x Rapid Rewards points per dollar on all other spending on the card.
• Four upgraded boardings per year (when available).
• Get up to a $100 statement credit (up to $120 beginning Oct. 1, 2024) every four years for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry.
• Get up to 365 Inflight WiFi Credits each year.
• Chase 5/24 Rule: The card will be subject to the Chase 5/24 rule, so you may not be approved for the card depending on how many credit cards you’ve opened in the last two years.
• No foreign transaction fees
• Annual Fee: The card has an annual fee of $199, which is not waived for the first year of card membership.

Learn more about the *southwest performance biz*.

The Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Card

• Welcome Offer: bonus_miles_full
• Anniversary Bonus: Each year on your cardmember anniversary, you will receive 6,000 Rapid Rewards points.
• Get 10,000 bonus points toward earning the Companion Pass: Southwest will deposit 10,000 Companion Pass-qualifying points in your account at the start of each calendar year.
• Earn 3x Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent on Southwest purchases.
• Earn 2x Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent on Rapid Rewards^® hotels, car rental partner purchases, local transit and commuting (including rideshare). 
• Earn 1x Rapid Rewards points per dollar on all other spending on the card.
• 2 EarlyBird Check-In® per year.
• In-flight purchase discount: Save 25% on in-flight purchases when using your card. 
• Chase 5/24 Rule: The card will be subject to the Chase 5/24 rule, so you may not be approved for the card depending on how many credit cards you’ve opened in the last two years.
• No foreign transaction fees
• Annual Fee: The card has an annual fee of $99, which is not waived for the first year of card membership.

Learn more about the *southwest premier biz*.

Easy Path to BOGO Flights 

You won’t find a better deal in the world of travel than the Southwest Companion Pass: an unlimited buy-one, get-one flight pass. Even after Southwest (slightly) increased the points needed to qualify for the Companion Pass, we’re still singing its praises.

Typically, the Southwest Companion Pass requires you to earn 135,000 qualifying Southwest Rapid Rewards points … or fly 100 one-way revenue flights in a calendar year. Considering Rapid Rewards points earned through a sign-up bonus count towards the Companion Pass, you’d have more than enough once you factor in the points you earn for spending towards your sign-up bonus.

But remember, you need to earn all of the points in the same calendar year! If you meet the first part of the bonus in 2024 and then finish it up in 2025, you won’t get the companion pass. Don’t get me wrong, earning 120,000 Rapid Rewards points isn’t a bad consolation pass but if the Companion Pass is what you’re after – and it should be – there’s a little bit of strategy that goes into it. 

Once you earn all the points you need, you get your Companion Pass for the rest of the year and the entire following year. That means if your business spends big and is able to meet both spending requirements in the next month or two, you can get almost 18 months of BOGO flights and 120,000 Rapid Rewards points from a single credit card sign-up bonus. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better offer than that, period. 

Every once in a while we see Southwest include a more limited version of its Companion Pass as part of the sign-up bonus on its portfolio of personal credit cards but aside from that, being able to easily earn it with a single sign-up bonus is unheard of. In fact, most of the time it would require getting both a personal and business Southwest card in the same year. 

That can still be worth it in most cases but with these current offers, it’s completely unnecessary. And that’s exactly what makes the current bonuses worth your attention! 

What to Know Before You Apply

There are some considerations to work through before you apply, none more important than determining whether or not you’re eligible to open business credit cards. 

Do you have any income from freelance work, or plans to start freelance work? You have a business. Have you ever sold an item on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, or other platforms, or have plans to do so in the future? You have a business.

In fact, many Americans have what the banks would consider a small business and don’t even realize it.

At the end of the day, if you are selling any goods or services, or contracting with a company to do so in an attempt to make a profit, you have a small business and thus are typically eligible to apply for a small business credit card. That makes it possible for just about anybody to apply for a business credit card.

The next big consideration is figuring out if you’re eligible to open a Southwest Business card specifically.

While Chase only lets you hold one Southwest personal credit card at a time, the same isn’t true for business cards. That means you can already have one (but not both) of these cards and still qualify for the other. And if you’ve had one of these cards in the past, you’ll need to make sure it’s been more than 24 months since you last earned a bonus. Even if you’ve since closed the card, you won’t be eligible for it again within that 24 month window. 

Finally, these cards are also subject to Chase’s dreaded Chase 5/24 rule, so getting approved for one of these cards may be difficult depending on how many credit cards (from any bank, not just Chase) you’ve opened in the last 24 months. If you’ve opened five or more five credit cards with any bank in that period, you will not be approved for Chase credit cards, regardless of your credit score or history with Chase.

But if you are eligible, these Southwest credit cards are easily among the best credit cards you can get if you are under the Chase 5/24 rule. That’s especially true with these big bonuses clearing an easy path to Southwest’s Companion Pass.

Read our master guide to the Southwest Companion Pass! 

Pair with a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Preferred

Both of these Southwest Business cards make great companions to either the *csp* – or even the *chase ink preferred*. That’s because Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be instantly transferred to your Southwest Rapid Rewards account on a 1:1 basis, meaning 1,000 Chase points get you 1,000 Southwest Rapid Reward points. 

You can even transfer these points to Southwest to book a ticket to use with your Companion pass, paying just the taxes and fees on both tickets. It’s a great deal.

Learn more about the *csp*.

Learn more about the *chase ink preferred*.

Bottom Line

Chase is out with new, limited-time offers of up to 120,000 Rapid Rewards points after spending a total of $15,000 in the first nine months of card membership on both of the Southwest business credit cards. What’s more, if you’re able to meet the full bonus requirements still this year, you’ll also get Southwest’s coveted Companion Pass to boot! 

These limited-time offers end Sept. 16, but don’t delay – the sooner you sign-up, the sooner you earn all those points … and BOGO flights!