Does the Prime Visa have an annual fee?

No. Chase publishes a $0 annual fee on the Prime Visa. The membership that unlocks the card's 5% rate is a separate cost, and it is not zero.

Is there a monthly fee for the Prime Visa?

No. There is no monthly fee and no annual fee. The only recurring charge connected to the card is the Amazon Prime membership, which is billed by Amazon rather than by Chase.

Do you have to pay for Prime to have the Prime Visa?

You need an eligible Prime membership to earn the 5% rate. The card account itself does not close if the membership lapses; the Amazon earning rate drops to 3% instead.

What is the most expensive thing about the Prime Visa?

Interest, by a wide margin. At the published purchase APR of 18.74%-29.99% variable, a few months of carried balance costs more than a typical year of 5% rewards earns.

Are there foreign transaction fees on the Prime Visa?

No. Chase states you pay no foreign transaction fees on purchases made outside the United States, so the card costs nothing extra to use abroad.

Prime Visa

What does the Prime Visa actually cost?

The card's annual fee is zero. The membership that makes it worth carrying is not, and interest can cost more than both combined.

The short answer

What does the Prime Visa cost?

The card’s annual fee is $0. There is no monthly fee and no foreign transaction fee. The costs that do exist are the Amazon Prime membership at $139 per year, which the 5% rate depends on, and interest at the published purchase APR if you carry a balance. Only one of those is optional.

See the current Prime Visa offer Jump to the total

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The fee itself

Zero, and Chase says so plainly

The Prime Visa carries $0 (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). This is not a first-year waiver that reverts later, and it is not conditional on spending a minimum. It is simply a no-annual-fee card, which is the standard structure for a co-branded retail Visa.

That matters more than it sounds, because a $0 annual fee changes the shape of the whole decision. On a card with a fee, you have to earn back the fee before the rewards are real. On this one, every dollar of rewards is a dollar of rewards from the first purchase. There is no annual hurdle to clear and no reason to close the account in a lean year.

The second fee people ask about is also absent: no foreign transaction fees (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). Most $0-fee cashback cards charge 3% on foreign purchases, so its absence here is genuinely unusual and worth a page of its own — we wrote one on what that saves in practice.

Source: Chase — Prime Visa · verified 2026-08-11

The real cost

What the card actually costs to run

“No annual fee” and “free” are not the same sentence. Here is every cost attached to holding and using this card, with the ones you control separated from the ones you do not.

Every cost attached to the Prime Visa, and whether it is avoidable.
Cost	Amount	Avoidable?
Annual fee	$0	Not applicable — there is none
Monthly fee	$0	Not applicable — there is none
Foreign transaction fee	None	Not applicable — Chase charges none
Amazon Prime membership	$139 per year	Yes — but the 5% rate goes with it
Interest on a carried balance	18.74%–29.99% variable	Yes — pay the statement in full

Sources: Chase — Prime Visa · About Amazon — Prime free trial · verified 2026-08-11

Two of those five rows are real numbers, and they are the two the marketing does not lead with. The membership is a recurring charge from Amazon, not from Chase, which is why it never appears on a card comparison table — and why so many write-ups can honestly print “$0 annual fee” while describing a product whose headline rate costs $139 per year a year to keep switched on.

The membership

Is the Prime fee a cost of the card?

This is the question that decides whether the card is cheap or expensive, and the honest answer depends entirely on one thing: would you be paying for Prime anyway?

If you already pay for Prime

Then the membership is not a cost of the card. It is a cost you were already carrying, for reasons that have nothing to do with credit. Adding the Prime Visa on top of it costs you nothing and pays 5% at Amazon. In accounting terms the membership is sunk, and the card is genuinely free.

If you would buy Prime to unlock the 5%

Then the membership is entirely a cost of the card, and it is a large one. The comparison is not against a generic 2% card — it is against the Amazon Visa, the same issuer’s no-membership sibling, which earns 3% at the same merchants with no membership attached.

The math

Prime Visa rate at Amazon (with Prime): 5%
Amazon Visa rate at Amazon (no Prime): 3%
Extra return the membership buys: 2 percentage points
Annual Prime membership: $139

Extra earnings = annual Amazon spend x 0.02
Break even when extra earnings = $139
$139 / 0.02 = $6,950 of annual Amazon spending

Buying Prime purely to unlock the 5% starts paying for itself at roughly $6,950 a year of Amazon, Whole Foods and Chase Travel spending.

Below that figure the membership costs more than the extra two points return, and the no-membership card is the cheaper way to shop at Amazon. Above it, the Prime Visa wins on spending alone — before you count a single delivery.

If you would use Prime for its own sake, run the membership’s own break-even first and only then come back to the card. Double-counting the fee against both decisions is the most common way people talk themselves out of a card that would have suited them.

The expensive one

Interest is the cost that dwarfs the rest

Every figure above is small compared with this one. The card carries 18.74%–29.99% variable (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11) on purchases. Take the middle of that range and do the arithmetic on an ordinary balance.

Carry $1,000 for a year at roughly 24% and the interest is about $240. To earn $240 in rewards at 5% you would need to spend $4,800 at Amazon in the same year. In other words, a single four-figure balance carried for twelve months can consume the rewards from nearly five thousand dollars of Amazon shopping.

That is not a criticism specific to this card — every rewards card has the same structure, and the APR here is unremarkable for the category. It is a warning about what the card is for. A rewards card is a payment tool, not a borrowing tool. We break the month-by-month numbers down on the APR page.

Costs that are not costs

Three fees people expect and will not find

A fee for the rewards program. Some retail programs charge for the privilege of earning. This one does not; the earning is a feature of the card, not a subscription.

A minimum spend to keep the rate. There is no threshold you have to hit each year, and no tier that drops if you spend less. The rate applies from the first dollar to the last.

A redemption fee. Points are worth 100 points = $1 (each $1 in % back rewards earned is equal to 100 points) (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11), and no route charges you to convert them. Every redemption pays the same, which removes a whole class of decision from the card.

We are not listing the fees Chase does charge — late payment, returned payment, cash advance and balance transfer fees all exist and all vary. Those live in the pricing and terms document Chase links from the application page, and quoting a figure we cannot read from the source would break our own rule. Read that document before you apply; it is the one piece of homework on this card that genuinely matters.

See the current Prime Visa offer Back to the worth-it math

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Common questions

Does the Prime Visa have an annual fee?: No. Chase publishes a $0 annual fee on the Prime Visa. The membership that unlocks the card's 5% rate is a separate cost, and it is not zero.
Is there a monthly fee for the Prime Visa?: No. There is no monthly fee and no annual fee. The only recurring charge connected to the card is the Amazon Prime membership, which is billed by Amazon rather than by Chase.
Do you have to pay for Prime to have the Prime Visa?: You need an eligible Prime membership to earn the 5% rate. The card account itself does not close if the membership lapses; the Amazon earning rate drops to 3% instead.
What is the most expensive thing about the Prime Visa?: Interest, by a wide margin. At the published purchase APR of 18.74%-29.99% variable, a few months of carried balance costs more than a typical year of 5% rewards earns.
Are there foreign transaction fees on the Prime Visa?: No. Chase states you pay no foreign transaction fees on purchases made outside the United States, so the card costs nothing extra to use abroad.

The Prime Visa APR, and what it costs you — the one cost on this page big enough to erase the rewards entirely
Is the Prime Visa worth it? — the break-even arithmetic these costs feed into
Prime monthly vs annual — the membership is the real recurring cost, so the plan you pick matters
Prime Visa foreign transaction fees — a cost this card does not have, and what that is worth

Written by Stephen V. — An enthusiast who's genuinely into this. I read the terms, compile the published rates, and do the math. No lab coat, no credentials, no test lab.

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Last verified: 2026-08-12