An effortless way to earn a lot of miles, is to refer friends and family to sign up for airline and travel credit cards. To earn miles this way, the credit card needs to offer bonus miles for referrals and not all do. Some will offer the referral bonus all the time and some will offer referral bonuses for limited promotional periods only.
Airline and travel credit cards that offer these bonuses regularly are:
American Express: Delta, Delta Platinum, Platinum, Premier Rewards Gold, Gold, SPG
Barclaycard: Arrival Plus
Chase: Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Sapphire Preferred, United, Southwest Premier, Southwest Plus
The bonus miles offered are usually between 5,000 to 10,000 for each approved referral, and there is a cap on how many you can earn per year – usually 50,000 total miles.
You will either be emailed and/or mailed info by the credit card bank announcing the bonuses for referrals or you will find an option to refer when you’re logged into your online credit card bank account.
This is the process for each bank:
American Express: When logged into your Amex account click on “Refer a Friend” which is located at the bottom of the page
Barclaycard: You need to be targeted by mail or email with the referral offer
Chase: Visit this link https://www.chasereferafriend.com and enter the requested details (last name, zip code, last 4 digits on your Chase credit crd) and it will let you know if you have referral bonuses available
To refer a friend, you need to follow the instructions that the credit card provides. This is usually in the form of sending an email to the person that you are referring the card to via the credit card site so that a unique URL application link is generated. You may also be able to generate the unique link and post it to social media,
To earn the bonus, the person you referred needs to apply for the credit card via the link that is unique to you, and then be approved for the card.
One great way to take advantage of these referral bonuses is to refer your spouse. One of you signs up for the card first and uses it. Then wait until the option to refer is available, send a referral link to your spouse and get bonus miles awarded when they’re approved for the card!
Remember that credit cards need to be used responsibly and that not everyone will have a credit score and history that is good enough for some banks to approve issuing a card. Before referring a credit card to someone, make sure it makes sense to do so.
Here is my referral link to sign up for the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer credit card as an example – feel free to sign up through it if you’d like. I’d love to earn some extra points!