Earn A Rare Bonus On The Blue Business Plus AMEX, Transfer And Keep Your Points Alive With No Annual Fee, Plus 0% APR, And Earn 2 Points Per Dollar Everywhere!

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Earn 15,000 Points On The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express

Terms and restrictions apply, see rates and fees here.

Welcome bonus:

This card doesn’t typically offer any publicly available welcome bonus, but currently you can earn 15K bonus Membership Rewards points for opening the Blue Business Plus AMEX and spending $3,000 in 3 months.

Annual fee: 

None

Welcome bonus terms: 

As with all AMEX cards, if you’re an existing AMEX cardholder, there is no hard credit pull for applying for a card.

You officially won’t get the welcome bonus on this card if you have or have had this card, though readers have reported success after several years.

You can tell if you are eligible for an AMEX welcome bonus by simply applying. If you are not eligible for the bonus you will get a popup notification after clicking to apply for the card. At that point you can decide whether to proceed or cancel the application before it is actually processed.

You must keep the card active without closing or downgrading it for at least 12 months.

Card earnings: 

Earn 2 AMEX Membership Rewards points per dollar everywhere, on up to $50,000 in annual spending.

After $50K of spending in a calendar year, earnings drop to 1 point per dollar for the remainder of the calendar year.

Spend Threshold:

You’ll need to spend $3,000 on this card within 3 months.

You can pay your federal taxes for a 1.85% fee. If you overpay your taxes you can request a refund or apply it to your next year’s taxes.

My local natural gas company allows me to prepay up to $1,000 on a credit card for a $1.65 flat fee. That’s a great way to earn miles and help meet a spend threshold. My electricity supplier allows me to pay with a credit card for free as long as I am enrolled in autopay.

See this post for more ideas on meeting a credit card spend threshold.

Keep your AMEX Points Alive, Fee-Free: 

AMEX has many excellent cards with hefty annual fees. Those often come with great signup bonuses, but what happens if you don’t want to continue paying an annual fee?

If you don’t have any active AMEX cards that earn Membership Rewards, you will lose those points when you close your card unless you transfer them out to an airline first.

AMEX may be willing to offer you a bonus to keep your card open for another year, but if not, the Blue Business Plus is a great way to keep your points alive.

Best of all, and this is a very rare feature for a card with no annual fee, you will still be able to transfer your points to airlines or hotels on demand. And that’s exactly what you should in order to avoid them being devalued by an airline or hotel.

0% APR:

This card comes with 0% intro APR on purchases within 12 months of account opening.

Potentially, that means you can stick your payments aside from the minimum payment into a 5.3% savings account and pay the card back after a year with no penalties or interest.

Creating a killer combo with Business Platinum:

If you have AMEX Business Platinum card you can get a 35% rebate on all business/first class redemptions and in economy on the airline of your choice. That rebate gives you a value of at least 1.54% back on your AMEX points.

Combined with earning 2 points per dollar everywhere on the Blue Business Plus card, you’ll earn a minimum of 3.08% back towards travel everywhere thanks to Hybrid points that allow you to choose between transferring points into miles or redeeming them for paid airfare.

But what’s great about the Blue Business Plus card is that unlike with other card combos, you don’t need another card to transfer points into miles.

Hybrid Points And Points Rebate:

The Business Platinum card allows you to choose whether to redeem points for paid travel or to transfer points into airline miles when tickets are expensive. That’s a powerful tool that shields you from program devaluations.

AMEX transfer partners include:

• Air Canada Aeroplan (Star Alliance) 1:1 instant transfer.
• ANA (Star Alliance) 1:1 transfer.
• Avianca Lifemiles (Star Alliance) 1:1 instant transfer.
• Singapore (Star Alliance) 1:1 transfer.
• AeroMexico (Skyteam) 1:1.6 transfer.
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue (Skyteam) 1:1 instant transfer.
• Alitalia (Skyteam) 1:1 instant transfer.
• Delta (Skyteam) 1:1 instant transfer.
• Aer Lingus (OneWorld) 1:1 instant transfer.
• British Airways (OneWorld) 1:1 instant transfer
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (OneWorld) 1:1 instant transfer.
• Iberia (OneWorld) 1:1 instant transfer
• Qantas (OneWorld) 1:1 instant transfer
• Emirates 1:1 instant transfer
• Etihad 1:1 instant transfer
• Hawaiian 1:1 instant transfer
• JetBlue 1:0.8 instant transfer
• Virgin Atlantic 1:1 instant transfer
• Choice Hotels 1:1 instant transfer
• Hilton 1:2 instant transfer
• Marriott 1:1 instant transfer

Mileage transfers can often make sense for one-way, last-minute, or premium class travel. The value with airline miles can be under a cent each if used poorly, but properly used the points can be worth 5 cents, 10 cents, 15 cents, or even more per point, the sky is the limit.

For example I love using 6.5K miles transferred to Avianca to book a last minute $459 ticket on United, thanks to Avianca’s amazing short-haul redemption award chart.

There are also often bonus offers for transfers from AMEX to airlines.

Otherwise, you can choose to use them for paid tickets when tickets are less expensive at 1.54 cents (or higher) value per point.

That’s because Business Platinum cardholders get a 35% points rebate for award redemptions on paid tickets on the airline that you chose for your $200 fee credit in coach. You can chat with AMEX online to change your airline selection. You’ll also get a 35% points rebate on all airlines in business and first class. You can book these tickets on AMEXTravel.com. If you want to redeem for travel on Southwest then you’ll need to call AMEX to book.

In other words if you want to book a $250 flight you’ll use 25,000 points, but AMEX will give you a 35% rebate, so you’ll get back 8,750 points in coach on the airline of your choice or in business/first class on all airlines, making the net cost just 16,250 points and earning you a value of 1.54 cents per point. When you use points for paid tickets you don’t pay any taxes and you still earn miles for the flight!

Plus the rebate is stackable with discounted AMEX Insider fares that can be excellent deals. For example a $350 flight can be discounted to just 25K points, meaning you’ll still pay just 16,250 points, a value of 2.15 cents per point!

You can get up to 1,000,000 rebated points per year per account.

This hybrid redemption ability makes your points very valuable as they can be used for mileage transfers or paid flights, whichever provides more value for the flights you want to book.

AMEX Offers:

Earn statement credits at stores that you register for in your AMEX account.

AMEX protections: 

• An additional year of warranty coverage, double the original manufacturers warranty, and if you have any issue in the extended warranty year they’ll pay to have it fixed or refund your entire purchase price without a hassle. This benefit is far more valuable than warranty benefits offered by other banks.
• If you need to dispute a charge there’s nobody who makes it easier or as pain-free as American Express does. It’s the easiest dispute resolution process in the industry by leaps and bounds and you can do it all online.
• If your item is stolen or broken within 90 days you’ll be covered.
• Complimentary Shoprunner 2 day free shipping and return shipping on hundreds of websites.
• Secondary car rental CDW protection worldwide and primary available for $19.95/rental.

Business vs Consumer card:

AMEX business cards don’t appear on your credit report. That’s good for several reasons.

First of all they won’t count against your 5/24 count for opening new Chase cards. Only cards on your report that have been opened within the past 24 months count for that.

Second, when you spend money on personal cards your credit score will be hurt even if you pay your bill on time. A whopping 30% of your credit score is based on credit utilization. You can pay off your card bill before your statement is generated to avoid that, but that takes effort and laying out money well before you have to. Additionally it’s good to have the statement close with a couple dollars to show the card is active and being paid every month. On an AMEX business card it’s just not reported, so you can wait until the money is due without it having a negative effect on your score.

Third, if you close a business card it won’t ever have an effect on your score.

You may already have a business that needs a card to keep track of expenses. For example if your name is Joe Smith and you sell items online, or if you have any other side business and want a credit card to better keep track of business expenditures you can open a business credit card for “Joe Smith” as the business. You don’t need to file any messy government paperwork to be allowed to do that. Just be sure to select “Sole Proprietorship” as the business type and just use your social security number in the Tax Identification Number field

Dan’s quick thoughts:

People are always asking what they should do with their points before they close their AMEX Platinum or Gold card.

Transferring points to airlines without short-term plans to use them is a bad bet. Airlines are always devaluing points, so having them parked with an airline isn’t a good idea.

Having this card allows you to keep your AMEX points alive at no cost, and even allows you to transfer points to airlines and hotels. Plus, this is an excellent card for the 2 points per dollar that you can earn everywhere!

It’s a no-brainer to keep in your AMEX portfolio.

Will you apply for the Blue Business® Plus AMEX?