Why this is the easiest time of the year to earn 5 points per dollar spent
Editor's Note
The most wonderful time of the year is upon us: It's the holiday season, and we're checking off gift lists for loved ones. For reward card enthusiasts, now is also the easiest time of the year to earn 5 points per dollar spent on your purchases.
Ready to learn how? Let's dive into what select Chase cardholders should know.
Earn bonus points with PayPal on your Freedom card
For the month of December, PayPal is back as a bonus category on the legacy Chase Freedom* and the Chase Freedom Flex® (see rates and fees).
From now through Dec. 31, cardholders can earn 5% cash back (up to $1,500 in purchases) in one of the easiest-to-maximize categories of all time: PayPal (activation required).
However, if you carry multiple Chase cards — namely the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (see rates and fees) or the Chase Sapphire Reserve® (see rates and fees) — you're not limited to cash back. Chase lets those with both a Freedom or Freedom Flex card and a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card turn the cash back earned with their card from the Freedom family into transferable points. So, for the month of December, that 5% cash back earned for PayPal purchases becomes a whopping 5 points per dollar spent.
*This card is no longer available to new applicants. The information for the Chase Freedom has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
Related: 4 reasons why I recommend the Chase Freedom Flex to beginners
Where can you use PayPal?
It's common for PayPal to be a checkout option when shopping online — even with major retailers that accept credit cards directly.
Whether you are checking out online with Home Depot, Nordstrom or Target, or want to reload your Starbucks balance, PayPal is often a payment option. Some physical stores also now accept PayPal as a payment form.
As an easy example, if you place an order from Target.com, select the Edit Payment option, then choose PayPal with your linked Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex card. Then, as long as you activate the bonus by Dec. 14, you'll earn 5% cash back (or 5 points per dollar spent).
Example: Paying taxes with PayPal
TPG contributing editor for credit cards Matt Moffitt recently used PayPal to pay his quarterly estimated taxes through Pay1040. He paid $1,474 in taxes with his Freedom card with an additional $26 processing fee, totaling $1,500.
Because he also holds the Sapphire Reserve, the Freedom's cash-back earnings convert into Ultimate Rewards points — in this case, 7,500 points worth $154 based on TPG's December 2025 valuations.
After subtracting the fee, that's a net gain of roughly $128, making it an easy way to max out the bonus if you have unavoidable bills that accept PayPal.
Can you earn bonus points on person-to-person transfers with PayPal?
What about other PayPal options, like sending money to someone else?
Details on Chase's website state that "Person-to-Person (P2P) transactions made with your Chase Freedom card on PayPal may not be eligible for 5%."
In the past, these transactions sometimes counted as bonus-triggering events in our tests. However, remember that — unlike when checking out via a retailer's online site — when you send money to a friend or similar, you're typically the one paying the PayPal fee.
When this bonus category appeared in the past, I paid a friend back $120 via PayPal. There was an approximately $4 fee to send the money, and I earned about 620 points on that charge with my Freedom.
Since I also have the Sapphire Reserve, those 620 points were worth about $13 based on TPG's December 2025 valuations — comfortably more than the $4 fee it cost me to earn them.
If you don't have a premium Ultimate Rewards card, points earned on the Freedom are generally worth 1 cent each, which would make these earnings worth about $6.
That's still roughly $2 more in rewards than the fees themselves. But even if you don't need to send money to a friend, you can often check out with PayPal at hundreds of online retailers, pay no additional fees and still earn 5% cash back (or 5 points per dollar spent).
Related: The power of the Chase Trifecta: Maximize your earnings with 3 cards
Bottom line
The biggest challenge of the rotating Freedom bonus categories is simply keeping up with them, since they change every three months. The PayPal category didn't begin until the start of this month. However, it's still pretty easy to maximize.
You can set your eligible Freedom card as the default in your PayPal account and then check out via that method when shopping online through the end of the year.
If you do that and have heavy online shopping patterns during the holiday season, you should max out this quarter's bonus category in no time.
To learn more, read our full review of the Freedom Flex.
Apply here: Chase Freedom Flex