Link: Apply now for the Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card
The Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card (review) is Southwest’s most premium business card, and it’s extremely compelling. If you fly Southwest with any frequency, then I think picking up this card should be an obvious choice. The card has a huge welcome bonus, and lots of great perks that more than justify the $199 annual fee on an ongoing basis.
In this post I wanted to focus specifically on a unique benefit offered by this card, which is an unbelievable number of annual Wi-Fi credits.
In this post:
Receive 365 Southwest Wi-Fi credits per year
As it currently stands, Southwest Airlines charges $8 for inflight Wi-Fi. That applies per device per flight, regardless of the length of the flight. While some airlines are moving toward offering free Wi-Fi, there’s no indication of that happening anytime at Southwest (though Southwest offers free Wi-Fi to A-List Preferred and Business Select customers).
Southwest has a suite of co-branded credit cards, though only one card offers a benefit that can get you free Wi-Fi. Specifically, the Southwest Performance Business Card offers up to 365 inflight Wi-Fi credits per year, for travel on Southwest.
That’s right, you can get the $8 Wi-Fi fee for Southwest flights reimbursed up to 365 times per year, in the form of a statement credit. You just need to use your card to pay for the Wi-Fi, and then the $8 statement credit will post to your billing statement within one to two billing cycles (though typically much faster than that).
This is every bit as straightforward as it sounds, as you’re not even limited to using just one of these credits per day (as long as you don’t go over the annual limit of 365 credits)
- If you have multiple flights in a day, you can get a statement credit for Wi-Fi on each flight
- If multiple people are traveling, you can use your card to buy Wi-Fi for anyone in your party
- The terms of the benefit don’t even specify that you have to be the one traveling, so you can even use this to buy Wi-Fi for others (though it would need to be someone you trust with your credit card number)
As you can tell, this has a maximum annual value of $2,920 (assuming you used all 365 credits, at $8 each). Of course I imagine almost no one is maxing that out, but the potential value here is huge.
The Southwest Performance Business Card is easy to justify
The Southwest Performance Business Card is a generally compelling card, even beyond the Wi-Fi benefit. For one, the card offers a massive welcome bonus, which can get you a ton of value upfront.
It’s very easy to recoup the card’s $199 annual fee, in my opinion, with two benefits alone. The card offers 9,000 Rapid Rewards bonus points on the account anniversary every year, which gets you well over $100 in airfare on Southwest. On top of that, the card offers four Upgraded Boardings per anniversary year, getting you among the earliest boarding positions, which is valuable on Southwest.
If you ask me, all the other card benefits are the icing on the cake. And there’s a lot of icing here, from a credit toward Global Entry or TSA PreCheck, to the ability to spend your way to elite status, to a solid rewards structure.
So while all the card’s perks are great, I think the Wi-Fi benefit is the one that stands out the most, given the huge potential value for a frequent Southwest flyer.
If you’re looking for a personal card, the Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Card (review) is by far the most lucrative. It has a $149 annual fee, and offers perks like 7,500 anniversary bonus points, a $75 annual Southwest travel credit, and more.
Bottom line
The Southwest Performance Business Card is Southwest’s most premium credit card. It has the highest annual fee, but also offers the strongest perks. I think the most intriguing aspect of the card is the up to 365 annual Wi-Fi credits that it offers. Just charge an $8 Southwest Wi-Fi purchase to the card, and you’ll get reimbursed up to 365 times annually. That’s pretty awesome…
What do you make of the Southwest Performance Business Card Wi-Fi benefit?
Awaiting for your Southwest review...
The biggest problem I've found with the WiFi credit is that I actually have to fly WN...
I fly SWA a few times a each year, in the past 3 year, on every flight the WIFI has either not worked or been so slow it was not usable. To me this benefit offers no value.