Chase Freedom 2019 Q2 categories: Grocery and Home Improvement stores
 

2nd Quarter 2019
GROCERY STORES
HOME IMPROVEMENT STORES

Grocery is a recurring category. See discussion from 2018 Q2:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chas...chase-pay.html

Still completing spending on another Chase card. But will be glad to buy some gift cards at least...

Figures. I just purchased $5000 custom closet doors at Home Cheapo.

No Chase Pay this time though. I wonder if they're starting to back away from that overall.

Probably I'm overthinking this, but when I use the Visa supplier locator to check the Merchant Category Code of a Lowe's Home Improvement (that's what Google Maps calls it) store, I learn that its Industry/MCC is Lumber and Building Supplies - 5200. Further, the list of industries in the supplier locator does not include Home Improvement, and the list of Merchant Category Codes does not include Home Improvement. Am I doing something wrong?

Not really, but you should have no issue getting the credit from a major chain store like Lowe's, even if you need to have them manually adjust it in case it doesn't automatically trigger for some reason.

Grocery is reoccurring, but timely especially as Kroger tries to reduce Visa credit exposure (which is almost all of the Chase Freedom cards). I am still waiting to see if Kroger will expand its Chase Pay QR pilot for it to be a more interesting quarter.

The activation option will be here starting 3/15: https://creditcards.chase.com/freedo...cards/calendar

Sucks for me because I will easily max the Home Improvement on two Freedoms in a couple of weeks. Would have loved it not paired with groceries. At any rate, love not having to buy any gift cards.

Good, because I'm HUNGRY for gift cards. Honestly I'd have preferred drug stores again but that wouldn't happened back to back.

Maybe they wanted to promote their own app in the past, now there is almost no use for it with the current Samsung Pay integration.

It shows Target and Walmart excluded from grocery. Strange that Chase does this as many Walmarts have a Chase bank inside. (my local WM included)

When in doubt, simply make a small-dollar, test purchase and see if the bonus accrues.

RNE, a fount of knowledge.

Home improvement category doesn't apply to home furnishing correct? It doesn't earn 5x back for furniture/electronic purchases?

The test is not what you buy, but where you buy it.

While that is usually possible, it shouldn't be necessary. Since Chase has declined a bonus because the merchant had an ineligible category code, it would make sense for Chase to provide the category codes that qualify for the bonus, especially in a case where no merchant category code matches the announced bonus group.