American Express has brought back one of its best promotions for adding employee/authorized user cards to Business Green, Gold and Platinum accounts: 20,000 Membership Rewards points after $4K in purchases in the first 6 months on each employee card (up to 100,000 bonus points total).
Employee card offers have come and gone over the last couple of years in various permutations, but this offer matches the best that we’ve seen. It’s worth noting that even folks with new business cards can add employee cards and the spend on those employee cards will count as minimum spend towards the welcome offer…effectively allowing for a double dip.
The Deal
- Get 20,000 Membership Rewards points after $4K spend in the first 6 months for each employee card added to a Business Platinum, Gold or Green cards from American Express (up to 5 employee card or 100,000 bonus points max)
- Promotion is targeted (see links below to find out if your card is targeted and to register)
Direct Link to Offer (Business Platinum cardholders)
Direct Link to Offer (Business Gold cardholders)
Direct Link to Offer (Business Green cardholders)
Quick Thoughts
The terms indicate that you can only get the bonus for the first five additional cardholders you add and spend $4K (we’ve seen offers in the past where the bonus is extended to up to 99 authorized user cards). This is a great deal, but it’s especially useful when meeting minimum spend on a new card.
Let’s say that you sign-up for a Business Platinum card with the referral bonus of 150,000 Membership Rewards points after $15K in spend (this is what’s listed on our best offers page). Instead of spending directly on the card, you could add four authorized user cards (I’d actually go ahead and do five, but just for sake of argument let’s say four). The spend on those authorized user cards will count towards the $15K minimum spend. After meeting the $4k on each card you’d end up with 166K from the platinum (150K from the welcome offer and 16k points from the $16,000 in spend). You’d also get the 20K bonus on each of the four employee cards for an additional 80k total. All told, you’d have 246,000 Membership Rewards after $16,000 in spend. Wowza.
In the past, Amex has been fairly loosey-goosey about what it allows for authorized users and whether or not they make any attempt to verify that it is an actual person…there’s some pretty crazy stories out there. Of course, your mileage (and your tolerance for that sort of thing) may vary.
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