Starbucks Visa Card Review: Get 2,750 Stars Signup Bonus

by PointsGuru | Feb 1, 2018 | Retail

The leaked Chase Starbucks Visa card is now live for applications. Here’s a review of the card.

In case you are new to the Starbucks rewards program here’s a summary: All Starbucks Gold members get 2 stars per $1 spent at Starbucks. Get a free drink or food item after reaching 125 stars ($62.50 in spend). More in-depth post here on the program.

The New Starbucks Visa Card Offers these rewards:

• Get instant Gold status on the Starbucks loyalty program which typically takes 300 stars ($150 in spend) to reach
• Earn 1 star per $4 spent everywhere outside Starbucks (free item after $500 in spend)
• Earn 1 star per $1 spent on Starbucks purchases only when reloading your Starbucks balance via the app (if you pay directly at Starbucks you’ll earn the regular earn rate of 1/$4). The 1 star per $1 earned on Starbucks app reloads is in addition to the standard 2 stars per dollar earned by Gold members on all purchases. In total, you’ll end up with 3 stars per dollar, but again, the credit card is only adding 1 star extra per dollar.
• 8 Barista Picks: Curated food or beverage Rewards selected by baristas and automatically loaded to the cardmembers Starbucks Rewards account. These are random picks that get sent to you, not something you can choose. This benefit will load to your account 45 days after becoming a cardmember and will reset each cardmember year. Barista picks expire after 30 days.

Signup Bonus

• Earn 2,500 stars (20 free drinks) after spending $500 within the first 3 months
• Earn 250 stars (2 free drinks) when using the Starbucks Visa card to load your Starbucks card in the app for the first time

The Starbucks Stars program comes with a 6-month expiration on stars, and this expiration is the same for credit card holders. This is especially important to keep in mind with regards to the signup bonus since you’ll have to use up all 22 free items within 6 months. The good thing about this is that you can keep points from expiring by using this card and topping off rewards like we do with airline and hotel points.

Starbucks stars can be used for almost any free item – it’s not limited to a drink. Our suggestion is to find the most expensive food item from Starbucks which could be an $8 or so Turkey sandwich and use it for that! A typical drink runs under $5, so keep that in mind when determining the value of the rewards program.

Small Print

The Chase Starbucks Visa card is not available to current cardmembers or previous cardmembers of this credit card who received a new cardmember bonus for this credit card within the last 24 months. This is not possible now because this is a new card. Unknown whether the 5/24 rule applies to this card. This rule basically says you cannot get most cards from the Chase portfolio if you have too many applications or other cards.

You can use the card now in the app, but…!

Upon approval, you’ll be able to use a digital version of the credit card immediately in the Starbucks app (but not elsewhere).

Card comes with standard Chase card benefits like purchase protection, extended warranty, price protection, and car rental insurance.

Should you get the card?

The $49 annual fee is shocking because it really doesn’t do too much unless you really want to feel like you belong to Starbucks.  If a card charges an annual fee you should get benefits such as a free hotel night. A $49 annual fee with the IHG card can get you a free night stay at a Holiday Inn. The card also has foreign transaction fees and that makes no sense because they are such an international business.

Looking at the earnings on the card it’s not too bad but if you put in the annual fee it’s not impressive. The value comes to less than 1% back on everyday spend, and it’s slightly over 3% back on Starbucks purchases. To maximize the value of the card it would come to a valuation of 2% everywhere ($500 spend gets $10 sandwich at Starbucks) and 8% at Starbucks ($125 spend gets $10 sandwich).

This was a pretty hyped card which was leaked last year to include such a high annual fee. Starbucks is a brand that people obsess with such as Apple but you have to be a pretty ill informed shopper to actually pay a fee for this card.