The best travel rewards opportunities lie right under your nose, and don't have to be part of a large announcement or marketing push. They lurk and appear categorically, either in your e-mail or in hiding inside your personal account on chase.com and also slip away unnoticed if you're not looking. The same is true for a new partnership between United and Chase which is currently offering selected United cardholders 10x United MileagePlus miles when they shop at Paze, and a max mileage bonus of 20,000 more before the end of the year.

Explicitly: What's the offer?

Much simpler concept in the promotion: opt for using the eligible United Chase credit card in the Paze digital wallet to get 10x miles for all eligible purchases. There is a limit of a total of no more than 20,000 miles in total and the period of time this offer is running ends on December 31, 2026.

This is quite a substantial mileage for practical expenditures that you could be making online anyway. Twenty thousand United MileagePlus miles can be a very long way indeed, particularly when it comes to United and its Star Alliance partner airline award flights or upgrades.

The single word is crucial in all these, though: targeted. This offer is not available for all United cardholders. Chase is implementing it gradually, so the first step is to just see if you've been selected.

Which Cards Are Eligible?

The promotion is open to U.S. citizens using the following U.S. credit cards, co-branded by Chase Bank:

• United℠ Explorer Card
• United Quest℠ Card
• United Club℠ Card
• United Gateway℠ Card
• UNITED MileagePlus® Awards Card
• United MileagePlus® Direct Card
• United℠ Presidential Plus℠ Card

If your card has been mentioned in that list, sign into your Chase account online (or via the mobile app) and check for any special offers banners. Or, look at the Chase email address you have, as that is the other option Chase will be using to send the notification.

But an important note: If you didn't opt in to get marketing communications from Chase and/or United, you will not qualify. Those communications aren't designed to reach you, nor will there be a way around it if you've previously selected to not receive them.

Why Paze Matters Here

If you do not know about Paze, you're not the only one! A digital wallet that's supported by a group of well-known U.S. banks including Chase and features as a new way to pay for products online. It saves payment details and enables you to pay at merchants who accept them without having to re-enter payment information every time.

Chase has already rolled out Paze-like bonuses on some of its other cards. Variable 4x points Paze Promotions have been introduced to all the models with the Freedom Flex, Freedom Unlimited, Sapphire Preferred, and Sapphire Reserve all receiving different 4x points Paze promotions at select shops. The scheme for this one is United specific, but using passenger miles rather than MilesPlus miles.

Eligibility criteria for this promotion are: You must have an existing Paze account and be provisioned as a Chase customer in Paze's "Customer Eligibility" section prior to making retail purchases using this promotion.

Focus on ways to utilize this before the December deadline

There is a healthy number of miles to go (20,000) and a time limit here (until the end of 2026), but no reason not to sleep on it. The offer, itself, only applies to web sales from Paze, so they are just looking to direct eligible online web purchases to Paze whenever they are accepted.

Look for subscription item payments, digital payment items, or retail orders that you already make online that you can consider rethinking. Paze is offered at check-out and earns bonus by using it on a United Chase Card. Even if you spend just a couple hundred dollars here and there on spending around your home, the 20,000 mile limit will come a long way toward being reached.

E.g., for point of reference on United's miles' value: 1.2 to 1.5 cents per mile earns them points for travel with United. In that scenario, a per mile value of 20,000 miles would correspond to between $240 and $300 in travel value, which is worth what you would spend anyway.

The Bottom Line

This promotion is just one of a series of trends to watch. Chase started its campaign to step up bonus promotions on select families of cards with Paze and now the United co-branded suite is on that journey. Whereas, if people pay attention to such offers and use them, there is actual incremental value being distributed, particularly when making an incremental spend on Paze isn't a matter of what or where we spend it, merely how.

The disadvantage is that targeted promotions always have an imbalance between the players. If two people both hold a United Explorer Card, their unique experiences will vary due to them both being in this wave. That sucks, but that's also the way these are handled at Chase and at United, too so make it a habit to just log in to your accounts frequently and make sure that you aren't being “warned” too erratically via the channels you actually watch. If you are targeted, then it takes less than fifteen minutes to activate the offer and setup up Paze. The miles, though, could be well worth the effort.