(Reports) Chase Tightens Up Approvals On Business Card Applications

Anecdotal reports indicate that Chase has tightened up on approving applications for INK business cards, especially since last month (October 2024).

I’ve been grumbling about this for a while now (I had been seeing anecdotal evidence of approval tightening even from before October), and there’s now a Reddit r/churning survey indicating the same. It’s not a huge sample size, but worthy of discussion.

The biggest factor seems to be that those who already have open INK cards are less likely to get approved for a new one. Here are some stats:

• Those with zero INK cards had an 87% chance of getting approved for an INK card. (14)
• Those with one INK card had an 68% chance of getting approved for an INK card. (19)
• Those with two INK cards had an 57% chance of getting approved for an INK card. (28)
• Those with three INK cards had an 18% chance of getting approved for an INK card. (40)
• Those with four INK cards had an 0% chance of getting approved for an INK card. (14)

Some other factors that seems to have an effect of approvals:

• Have an open Chase business deposit account had a mild positive effect on approvals.
• Preemptively lowering credit limit had a negative effect on approvals. (This is quite surprising as previously lots of evidence suggested that have a lower credit limit would greatly increase the chances of an instant automated approval.)
• Floating large balances on your Chase cards had a negative effect on approvals.
• Other factors like business revenue, years in business, and spend volume on cards did not necessarily have much effect on odds of approval.

There isn’t much data on other Chase business cards outside of the INK family, but it seems those might also be getting tougher on approvals.

Thanks again to r/churning for the data, you can read the discussion on Reddit at this link.