Top 5 Small Business Credit Card Sign Up offers for October - These cards provide the best value out of their welcome bonuses

 

Here are the Rewards Canada Top 5 Small Business Credit Card Sign Up offers for the month of October 2020!  This is not a 'best' credit card list like our Top Travel Rewards Credit Card rankings but instead a look at cards for small businesses that have very good acquisition (welcome/sign up) offers. As always when choosing a card you should always take other factors into account other than the just sign up bonus, but when some of these cards are first year free, they can and do pay off even when you grab them strictly for the sign up rewards. This month we see four first year free cards on the list! And remember this list is based on minimum value towards travel which we calculate as the minimum value of the welcome bonus less the annual fee. It is entirely possible to receive more value out of the welcome bonuses on some the cards below namely those like Aeroplan and Marriott. 

I should note there is one other business card to take a look at and that is the Business Platinum Card from American Express. If you know someone who can refer you to it you can get a pretty big bonus of 75,000 points when you spend $7,000 on the card. The card does have a $499 annual fee so it's minimum travel value is $251 but you can boost that by converting to Aeroplan which would give a minimum $401 value.

Here are our top 5 small business credit card sign up offers for October:

 CIBC Aerogold® Visa* Card for Business (Apply here)

 Minimum value: $420
This card offers welcome bonus of 20,000 Aeroplan miles when the first purchase is made at any time. An additional bonus of 15,000 Aeroplan Miles is awarded when you make $3,000 in net purchases during the first 4 monthly statement periods. Those 35,000 miles are worth no less than $420 as the first year annual fee on this card is also waived. That is a minimum however as more than likely those miles should be worth $1,000 or more! In fact if you take the per mile value from our post from late July 2019 this welcome bonus would be worth well over $2,000

BMO Rewards Business Mastercard (Apply here)

Minimum value: $357

This card is offering 50,000 points when you spend $5,000 on the card in the first three months. On top of that they are waiving the $120 annual fee in the first year which means you get the full value out of those 50,000 points which when redeemed via bmorewards.com for travel will net you just over $357.

Marriott Bonvoy™ Business American Express® Card  (Apply here)

Minimum value: $350

This card awards 50,000 Marriott Bonvoy points which are awarded after spending $1,500 on the card in three months. Those points are worth at least $500 in our minds which means after subtracting the annual fee you are coming out ahead by $350. In reality you can pull even more value out of the card (into four figures) as we outlined in our post A look at how The Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card provides huge value!  Don't forget you get an annual free night with the card as well on the card anniversary date! 

CIBC Aventura® Visa* Card for Business Plus (Apply here)

 Minimum value: $350
This card offers welcome bonus of 20,000 Aventura Points when the first purchase is made at any time. An additional bonus of 15,000 Aventura Points is awarded when you make $3,000 in net purchases during the first 4 monthly statement periods. Those 35,000 points are worth no less than $350 as the first year annual fee on this card is also waived. That is a minimum however as when you redeem the CIBC Aventura flight award chart you can get more value out of those points (up to $700) dependent on the price of the airline ticket you are redeeming for.

BMO^® AIR MILES^®† Business^® Mastercard^®* (Apply here)

Minimum value: $330
Like the other BMO Business card on this list, this card comes with a first year annual fee waiver which means the 3,000 AIR MILES welcome bonus comes at no extra cost. You'll receive 1,000 bonus miles on your first purchase and 2,000 more miles if you spend $5,000 on the card in the first three months of having the card. We value AIR MILES Reward Miles at no less than 11 cents each when you redeem for travel so that puts this welcome bonus value at a minimum of $330.

If you went for all these cards you ultimately could end up with over $1,700 in travel credits but even if you only take on one or two you are helping your travel budget significantly at no cost other than regular credit card spend. We don't really recommend getting all five in one month unless you know you can meet the minimum spend for them all at once, rather you'd want to pick one or two right now, perhaps another next month and so on.

American Express is not responsible for maintaining or monitoring the accuracy of information on this website. For full details and current product information click the Apply now link.

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