you maybe right. idk, but my guess is there is some payment because i dont see chase is offering a $300 travel credit, a $300 dining credit and $500 the edit credit on a $795 af, especially since they are trying to stem the bleed. there will be breakage but it still feels too generous; the credits minus af is $305, which is the same as amex plat ($895 - $600 fhr - $200 airline - $400 resy). we can argue about the breakage for the respective credits, but amex has the benefit of higher interchange fees, worse multipliers, and a customer base who has more spending power and are less concerned about points. amex will also get a boost in their other businesses such as resy and network processing. therefore i feel chase need a little something to make the math work

and as mentioned, it could also be via visa/opentable. visa/opentable are know to be paying top restaurants to bring them to or keep them at opentable and this could be part of the deal. it could also be part of the visa dining collection arrangement. this is part of the fight between resy and opentable, so a restaurant, visa/opentable and chase arrangement will give us similar dynamics/economics as amex and resy

there are also reasons a restaurant will participate or even pay. for example, mawn (since you are from philly), a really hard to get into restaurant, doesnt take reservation for lunch and there are empty tables when i visited them for lunch a month or so back. so there is still value. and not every restaurant is hard to get into. in philly, 7/10 of the places still have vacancies for a sat night for booking on a friday night (today). this is despite the credits (i note that credits are not yet available to existing holders). in nyc, the list includes places like momofuku, which isnt really difficult to get a spot. other reasons why very popular restarants do want to particpate can be to drive more exposure and demand, and then up their prices, especially if visa/opentable is paying for it or that they think customers may end up spending even more