Compliance Memorandum: Your 5% Categories Do Not Activate Themselves

TO: Holders of credit cards bearing rotating 5% categories

FROM: The BuyGetRewards Editorial Staff

RE: Quarterly activation requirement — second-quarter notice

DATE: May 14, 2026

Purpose of This Memorandum

This memorandum reminds affected cardholders that the 5% rotating-category programs attached to the Chase Freedom Flex and the Discover it require manual activation every quarter, that the second quarter of 2026 is now approximately half elapsed, and that the money involved is yours. No action is required of cardholders who prefer 1%.

The Requirement, Restated

Both programs share a structure. Each calendar quarter, the issuer designates bonus categories. Purchases in those categories earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 of combined spending per quarter — a $75 maximum bonus — and 1% thereafter. Cardholders who do not activate earn 1% on everything, including purchases made squarely inside the bonus category, in good faith, by people who assumed the card would simply behave.

Activation is a button. The Editorial Staff has confirmed, across sixteen consecutive quarters and two issuer apps, that the button does not press itself.

The Cost of Inaction, Computed

A cardholder who places the full $1,500 of quarterly spending in-category earns $75 activated and $15 unactivated. The difference is $60 per quarter, or $240 per year, per card. A two-card household running both programs at the cap forfeits $480 per year by declining to press two buttons eight times — enough, for orientation, to purchase an Apple Watch SE 3 ($249) and fund roughly the first four years of a $349 iPad's amortization, per our April analysis.

More modest figures behave the same way. A household placing $600 per quarter in-category forfeits $24 per quarter, $96 per year. We timed activation at 38 seconds in the Chase app and 44 seconds on Discover's site. At $60 per 38 seconds, the effective wage is $5,684 per hour. We are aware of no other legal activity that pays this rate, and we have looked.

Third-party surveys have placed non-activation somewhere near a third of eligible cardholders. Issuers do not publish the figure. We understand why, and we believe the surveys.

Retroactivity Provisions

The two programs differ in one respect that punishes procrastination unequally. Chase permits activation until a posted deadline — historically the 14th of the quarter's final month, which for the current quarter means mid-June — and applies the 5% retroactively to April 1. Discover, under the terms as we read them this week, applies the elevated rate from activation forward; every unactivated day of in-category spending converts directly and permanently to 1%. Verify your own card's current terms. We verified ours. They were where we left them.

Q2 and Q3, As They Concern Electronics

The categories rotate annually, and we will not pretend to know a quarter's lineup before the issuer announces it. The historical patterns, however, are stable enough to state plainly: PayPal has appeared as a category with some regularity in summer and fall quarters, and Amazon appears most reliably in the fourth quarter, with periodic earlier appearances. These two categories are where electronics purchasing quietly becomes a 5% activity — a PayPal quarter converts nearly every major electronics retailer that accepts it at checkout (Best Buy, B&H, Walmart, eBay) into a bonus category, and an Amazon quarter requires no explanation.

The calendar cooperates this year. Memorial Day falls on May 25, eleven days from this memorandum, inside Q2. Prime Day arrives in mid-July, inside Q3. A $1,200 television purchased at 5% returns $60; at 1%, $12. The $48 difference exceeds the price of the winning cable from our April testing ($15.99), with enough remaining for the runner-up, which you do not need.

Ancillary Stacking Provisions

The 5% category is a layer, not a ceiling. It coexists with cashback portals (typically 1 to 4% on electronics) and with discounted gift cards where the category's terms permit. A $500 purchase routed through an activated PayPal quarter and a 2% portal returns $35 instead of $5. The staff performs this routing without visible emotion, which is how we perform everything.

Required Actions

1. Open your issuer's app or site today. Locate the activation tile, which the issuer has made findable but not prominent.

2. Press it. The confirmation screen is instantaneous and mildly congratulatory.

3. Establish a recurring calendar event for the tenth of March, June, September, and December. The staff calendar's version is titled "Press the Button." It has fired sixteen consecutive quarters. We have pressed the button sixteen consecutive times.

4. Before any electronics checkout between now and September, check whether the current quarter's category can be routed — most commonly by selecting PayPal at checkout where applicable — and route it.

5. File this memorandum wherever you file things you intend to act on. We recognize the risk inherent in that instruction.

Acknowledgment

No signature is required. A rewards program that must be re-activated quarterly is, functionally, a standing test of whether cardholders want their own money, administered four times per year and failed by roughly a third of examinees. The Editorial Staff does not speculate on why the test exists. We simply pass it, on schedule, without pleasure, and encourage you to do the same.

— The BuyGetRewards Editorial Staff

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