Closing the card: what happens to your points

The most-read fact on this site is that Amazon rewards do not expire, and it is true. Chase’s wording is points don't expire as long as your card account remains open (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11).

Most coverage stops at the comma. The clause after it is the whole point of this page. The promise is not “these points last forever”, it is “these points last as long as this account does”. Two different sentences with two different consequences.

This is not unusual and it is not a trick. Chase says the same about its other cards — Cash Back rewards do not expire as long as your account is open (Chase — Freedom Unlimited, verified 2026-08-12) — and U.S. Bank makes the consequence explicit on the Amazon business cards: rewards do not expire while the account is open and in good standing, but a closed account loses all unredeemed rewards (U.S. Bank — Amazon business cards, verified 2026-08-21). That last wording is the clearest statement of the rule anywhere in the sourced material on this site, and it is worth reading even if you hold a consumer card, because it spells out what the consumer wording implies.

Before the procedure, the size of the thing. Chase’s conversion is 100 points = $1 (each $1 in % back rewards earned is equal to 100 points) (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11), and at the card’s 5% back (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11) rate a balance represents a lot of Amazon spending.

A year of steady Amazon buying can sit in that balance. Losing it to the order in which you clicked two buttons is an avoidable and irritating way to give up real money.

The entire risk is a timing risk, so the fix is a sequence. There is no published grace period after closure that we could find and cite, so the only safe assumption is that there is none.

Step three deserves a note on which route to pick. Every option pays the same fixed cent — the list is eligible purchases at Amazon.com checkout, cash back, travel and gift cards (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11) — so choose on speed and reversibility rather than value. Cash back is the right default here, because spending the balance at Amazon checkout creates a split payment on an order you might return, and a return after the account closes is exactly the tangle you are trying to avoid. The routes are ranked on the redemption page, and the checkout mechanics are on the checkout page.

Step five is the one most people have not considered. A product change moves you to a different card on the same account rather than closing anything, which keeps the no-expiry condition satisfied and keeps the credit history intact. If your reason for closing is “I do not use this card any more” rather than “I want this account gone”, it is usually the better move — the argument is on the Prime Visa closure page and the mechanics on the product change page.

Voluntarily cancelling a card is the obvious case. Three others end the same condition and catch people because they do not feel like a decision at all.

The issuer closes it. Chase’s condition is that the account remains open, not that you were the one who closed it. An account closed for inactivity, or for any other reason the issuer decides, ends the promise the same way. A card you have not used in two years with a balance of points on it is worth checking on.

You cancel Prime and assume the card went with it. It did not. The card account and the membership are separate. What cancelling Prime does is change the earning rate — Chase pays 3% back at Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market and the participating Amazon stores and sites without an eligible Prime membership (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12) without an eligible membership — while the existing balance stays exactly where it was. That is covered on the without-Prime page.

You close the Store Card and forget it had its own rewards. The Amazon Store Card’s rewards are a separate balance from the Prime Visa’s, arriving by a different mechanism, and closing that account is a separate event with the same implication. Where those rewards live is on the Store Card rewards page, and the closure decision is on its own page.

The obvious follow-up is whether there is a window after closure in which a balance can still be redeemed. Some issuers offer one; some do not.

Chase does not state one for this card in the material we can read, and we are not going to invent a number of days for you. Anyone quoting one is describing their own experience or another issuer’s policy. On a page whose entire purpose is to stop you losing money to a technicality, a comforting guess would be the worst thing we could publish. Our sourcing standard is on how we research.

The practical consequence is simple and it costs nothing: redeem first, close second, and the question never arises.