- Small business owners are being hit especially hard right now as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, which has forced many of them to either temporarily close or dramatically scale down their operations. Others are furloughing or laying off workers entirely as a result of the collapse in business.
- American Express has a business credit card product that might be especially useful for many of these business owners. Below, we’ll offer a guide that presents everything you need to know about signing up for The Business Platinum® Card from American Express.
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BGR has partnered with The Points Guy for our coverage of credit card products. BGR and The Points Guy may receive a commission from card issuers.Please note: the offers mentioned below are subject to change at any time and some may no longer be available.
American Express’ two companion Platinum credit cards, The Platinum Card® from American Express and The Business Platinum® Card from American Express, offer a ton of value between them, something we’ve touted on more than one occasion. These are all-around solid rewards cards, combining big up-front welcome offers with a long list of excellent perks. There is one major difference between the two that we’d like to highlight in this post – and if you’re a business owner, listen up:
Right now, you can earn up to 75,000 Membership Rewards® points with the Amex Business Platinum. All you need to do is first spend $10,000 with the card, at which point you’ll earn 50,000 Membership Rewards points. Once you spend an additional $10,000 within your first three months of card membership, for a total of $20,000, the extra 25,000 points will be yours.
Who should sign up: Let’s talk first about who should sign up for the Amex Business Platinum before getting into the specifics of the welcome offer. As we noted, this is a card geared toward business owners, so if you tend to use plastic to cover regular travel expenses over the course of running your business or if you merely need a charge card to pay for commonplace businesses costs of maybe a few thousand dollars a month, this may very well be the card for you.
The welcome bonus: As noted, Amex is offering new sign-ups the potential to earn a tiered 75,000 Membership Rewards points bonus. Yes, you’ve got to spend a lot to get those points, but that’s not a problem the average businessperson is likely to have since, again, this card is tailored to business owners whose expenses will easily surpass those of an individual consumer.
Aside from the welcome bonus, here are some of the many perks exclusive to this business version of the Platinum card (which the version for personal consumers doesn’t offer):
- 1.5x points on purchases of $5,000 or more (up to 1 million additional points per year)
- Up to $200 in annual statement credits for Dell technology purchases, split into a $100 credit for January through June and another $100 credit for July through December
Other perks which the card shares with the Amex Platinum include:
- Up to $200 airline fee credit each year
- Access to Centurion Lounges and Delta Sky Clubs (when flying Delta)
- Access to other lounges in the American Express Global Lounge Collection
- Gold elite status with Hilton Honors and Gold elite status with Marriott Bonvoy
- 5 points per dollar spent on flights and prepaid hotels (both must be booked through Amex Travel)
One final note
: This card proves its worth and then some for any businessperson engaged in regular travel — even though it comes with an annual fee of $595 (which can be offset by taking advantage of the $200 airline fee credit and the annual up to $200 Dell credit, meaning your net annual fee would only be $195 after that). And there’s tons more to take advantage of, from lounge access at almost any airport in the world to helping you get on the internet during flights — and of course that excellent bonus offer doesn’t hurt, either.
