My post “2008 Chase Check Card Promotion” was very popular in the past several months. Enroll your Chase debit card before 06/15/08, you can get $25 for every $250 in qualifying purchases made with your Chase Visa Check Card—up to $75. This promotion has ended on June 15, 2008. If you spent more than $250 before June 15, you should expect to receive your $25 (up to $75) bonus before July 1, 2008.Today I noticed that Chase just launched a new debit card promotion: Make 10 blink purchases by using your Chase debit card and you can get $10 bonus.

How to get the $10 bonus?

1. Enroll your Chase visa check card or visa check business card before August 31, 2008 at www.chasemake10blink.com.

2.  Make 10 blink purchases with minimum $5 each time in the next following 30 days of registration. (In order to be considered as blink purchase, you can’t use your PIN at checkout. You should use your debit card as a credit card.)

3. Get $10 directly deposited to your Chase checking account.

It looks like that this $10 is easy money to take if you receive the invitation from Chase bank. If your Chase debit card is not a blink card, you can’t participate in this promotion. A blink card should have a ‘blink” sign on the face of the debit card. (Note: Chase first applied the blink technique on their credit cards.) Of course, you should use your blink card at the stores where you can blink at the checkout. To find where you can use your blink card, you can go to www.chaseblink.com and locate the places that allows you to blink. Usually you can find a blink card reader at quick service restautants (McDonald’s), convenience stores (7-Eleven) and drug stores (CVS Pharmacy).

Chase first launched the blink cards in 2005. The difference between a regular card and a blink card is the blink card contains a tiny RFID chip. This allows you to pay for something using a contact-less terminal (no swiping). The card will communicate with the reader via radio frequency technology and transmits to the reader approximately the same data that’s stored on its magnetic stripe. Once the transaction is successful, the reader will emit a signal to acknowledge payment is done. Chase brands the technology Blink, American Express calls it ExpressPay, MasterCard calls it PayPass. They are all pretty much the same thing.

RFID doesn’t have a great reputation and is not so popular among thousands of cardholders right now. There are some privacy
and security concerns. If you don’t want the contactless feature of your debit card or credit card, you can call Chase to issue you a new card without blink capability.

As I mentioned in this post, Chase Freedom Card members can have 5 categories to get 3% cashback if they have a Chase checking account. My Chase Freedom Card actually gives me 5 categories to have 3% cashback this month. Following is from my monthly statement.