Cash advances on the Prime Visa

The purchase APR on this card is 18.74%–27.49% variable (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-13), and where you land in that range depends on your credit. The cash advance APR does not work like that. Chase publishes a single number: 28.49%, varying with the market based on the Prime Rate (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-13).

That is worth pausing on. A cardholder with excellent credit and a purchase rate near the bottom of the range does not get a better cash advance rate — everybody pays the same one. The cash advance rate also sits above the top of the purchase range, so for every single cardholder it is the most expensive way to borrow on this account short of the penalty rate.

Before any interest accrues at all, there is a transaction fee: either $5 or 4% of the amount of each transaction, whichever is greater (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-22).

The “whichever is greater” structure means the fee behaves differently at different sizes. Below $125 the $5 floor dominates and the effective rate is worse the smaller the withdrawal — $5 on a $40 advance is 12.5%. Above $125 the 4% takes over and the fee scales linearly. There is no cap published on this disclosure, so a large advance carries a proportionally large fee.

This is the same fee structure Chase applies to a balance transfer on this card, which we work through on the balance transfers page. The two transaction types are treated as siblings throughout the disclosure.

On purchases, Chase’s terms give you a window: your due date will be a minimum of 21 days after the close of each billing cycle, and Chase will not charge interest on new purchases if you pay your entire balance or Interest Saving Balance by the due date each month (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-22). That window is what makes it possible to use a credit card for a month at a time and pay nothing for the privilege.

Cash advances are carved out of it. The same disclosure states that interest is charged on balance transfers and cash advances from the transaction date (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-13). There is no free period, not even a day. Take $500 out on a Monday and by Tuesday it is accruing.

The practical consequence is that a cash advance cannot be “paid off before the statement arrives” in the way a purchase can. Paying it back the same week reduces the interest, but it does not eliminate it, and the fee is already charged either way.

This is the part that catches Prime Visa holders specifically, because the whole reason to carry this card is its earning rate. Chase’s rewards terms state that balance transfers, cash advances and cash-like transactions including travelers checks, foreign currency, money orders, wire transfers and cryptocurrency do not count as purchases and earn no points (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12).

Read that list carefully, because it is broader than “taking money out of a cash machine”. Foreign currency, money orders, wire transfers and cryptocurrency are all on it. Buying foreign currency at an airport bureau with this card is a cash advance, not a purchase — which is a genuinely surprising interaction with the fact that the card no foreign transaction fees (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). No foreign transaction fee does not make buying currency on the card sensible; it is still a cash advance and still priced like one. We cover the sensible way to use the card abroad on the foreign transaction fees page.

The table below is our arithmetic from Chase’s published fee and rate. It shows the fee, then the interest that accrues over 30 days at 28.49% simple, then the two added together, then the same amount expressed as what the equivalent Amazon spending would have earned at 5% back. That last column is the one that reframes the decision.

The last column is the argument. Taking $200 in cash for a month costs about what a quarter of typical annual Amazon spending returns in rewards. It is not that a cash advance is unusually expensive by the standards of short-term borrowing — it is that on this card it quietly cancels out the reason you hold the card.

One thing this table does not include, because it is not Chase’s to publish: the ATM operator’s own surcharge. That is set by whoever owns the machine and it is charged separately. Add it to every row.

For actual cash, a debit card. A withdrawal from your own checking account has no transaction fee from the card issuer and no interest, because it is your money. The only cost is whatever the ATM operator charges. This is not clever advice, but it is the answer in almost every case where someone is considering a credit card cash advance out of convenience rather than necessity.

For a purchase you need to spread out, the card already has better-priced options. Chase offers 0% APR Equal Pay promotional financing on qualifying Amazon.com purchases of $50 or more, divided equally over 6 to 48 billing cycles, offered from time to time (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-13), and separately a monthly fee of up to 1.72% of the amount of each eligible purchase or balance you select to pay over time, with no interest, just a fixed monthly fee (Chase — Prime Visa Pricing & Terms, verified 2026-08-17). Both are built for the “I need more time to pay for this” problem, and both are cheaper than an advance. We rank every instalment route at Amazon checkout on the Amazon monthly payments comparison.

For genuine short-term liquidity with nowhere else to turn, a cash advance is a legitimate tool and this page is not moralizing about it. Just take the smallest amount that solves the problem, and pay it back before the next statement rather than letting it sit on the account — because unlike a purchase balance, it is costing you from day one.