Early in September we provided our readers with details of the changes coming the American Express® Business Gold Rewards Card. Those changes are now here and along with the relaunch of the card comes an increased limited time welcome bonus offer of up to 70,000 Membership Rewards points.
The Welcome Bonus
- Earn up to 110,000 points:
Earn a welcome bonus of 70,000 Membership Rewards® points after spending $5,000 in purchases within the first three months of Cardmembership.
Plus earn 10,000 bonus points, when you charge $20,000 in net purchases to your Card account each calendar quarter. That’s a total of up to 40,000 points every year. That’s up to $1,100 in statement credits that can be reinvested in your business
The changes
Earn rate changes
The base earn
rate of 1 Membership Rewards point per dollar isn't changing however American Express has removed the three supplier program and replaced it with a
quarterly spend bonus. For those who have this card or are familiar with
it you'll know that you could pick three suppliers from a list of
merchants where you would earn 2 points per dollar spent instead of the
standard 1 point. The three supplier program will remain in place until
March 31, 2022 at which point it will be discontinued. In its place the
card now earns 10,000 bonus points for every $20,000 spent in each
calendar quarter. This means you could earn 40,000 extra points if you
do spend that much every three months on the card. You do have note that
if you don't spend that much you won't get any bonus. Amex also advises
that purchases made towards the end of a calendar quarter may not count
as well if they post to your account after the end of that quarter (ie
purchase made on June 29 that posts on July 1) So be sure to keep this
in mind!
Mobile Device insurance
Just
as we saw on the Cobalt Card, the American Express Business Gold
Rewards Card now has a Mobile Device Insurance Benefit.
Annual fee change
In
what is a rarity when credit card changes are announced the annual fee
on the card has dropped from $250 to $199.
Recycled Plastic
Also like the recent Cobalt Card and Green Card updates any new or replacement Business Gold Rewards cards will be made from 99% recycled plastic.
Wrapping it up
This is a decent bonus for a card that costs $199 per year. 70,000 point translates to no less than $700 in value. Those are the minimum values when utilizing the Use Points for Purchases redemption rate of 1,000 points to $10. Use the Fixed Points for Travel redemption and that value can go as high as double the dollar values listed above. Convert to Aeroplan, Air France KLM, British Airways, Marriott etc. and you can easily more than double those values.
I know for some people these changes won't be welcome as they have enjoyed that 2x points earning with select suppliers. Now, to be able to earn extra points users have to be able to hit that quarterly spend target of $20,000. I see this change being made to shift the usage of this card to businesses who do actually need to use the card for actual business purchases all the while curbing the gaming of the card by non-business users who simply got it to earn the 2x points via the bill payment company Plastiq.
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