355F1

My brother is wanting to get EXP status via CC spend.

He currently runs about $1mm annually through 3 different Business Cards. (He was paying everything by check until I showed him the way with how many points/miles he was losing!!!)

Will he have a better chance getting a very large initial spending limit with the Citi AA Business Card or the Barclay's Business Card.

His revenue is a a couple million dollars per year (He is a Dr.) and he has been in business for 15 years with perfect credit.

Antarius

Does he fly a ton? Unless he does and will get major benefit from EXP, I'd use different cards and book F/J using the points from there.

Centurion

I would just skip the Exp as I see many people not getting upgrade with Exp. I would steer him to something he would not have to worry getting a purchase rejected like any of the Chase business card products as they let you go above your credit limit as they are Visa Signature logo products. Or Amex which is not as good in my opinion but will certainly allow him a large spend each month.

OskiBear

No harm in steering a bit of the spend over to an AA card for some status - doesn't necessarily need to be EXP. If he runs through that much on the card, it shouldn't come at that much of an opportunity cost. At least Platinum Pro - that'll get him OW Emerald status.

Then, he can use one of the other cards that have transferrable currency/points.

Drwaz99

Sticking with the question and putting aside whether it's a good idea or not, there are so many variables that go into the starting credit limit you receive.

- His personal and buisness credit scores.
- His personal debt-to-income ratio.
- How many new cards he's gotten (on the personal side as both cards are personally guaranteed) within the past year or two.
- Number of inquiries on his personal reports.
- His personal income.
- Business Revenue.

Generally speaking, for their respective business cards, Citi will probably give him the higher out of the gate limit, but he'll likely have to pay the card off frequently with either card with that amount of spend on it. Citi business cards do have bonus categories (bonus miles from those categories don't count for LPs). Barclays gives you a bonus of 5% of your entire base miles earned during previous card member year each time you renew the card.

The only real way to know is to find the card that best suits his business needs and apply for it and see what happens.

davecraze

^^^ This.

It's so situation specific with Citi. I have a personal Citi Executive card that started at 60k credit limit and is now 250k credit limit, so I assume it goes much higher for business versions of the card. They are pretty good about raising it when you ask, but you have to really use it. I am hub-locked and most of my flights are on AA so it makes more sense for me (probably still not as good as a 2 percent cash back card but I do get real value from AA status). If he doesn't fly AA much, I would not even bother.

jordyn

Of course there's an opportunity cost. Every dollar you put on an AA card is a dollar you can't spend on a different card. For the $125K you'd spend to get Plat Pro, you'd be giving up somewhere between $1250 and $5000 in terms of the value of AA miles versus what you can earn elsewhere.

WeekendTraveler

Citi would probably give a higher spending limit.

cova

You are still earning miles on AA with the high spend, in addition to the Status LP.
You need a AA card to earn AA miles. Yes you can get BA card and redeem for AA flights, but better to redeem miles on the carrier you are traveling.

EXP has other benefits than upgrades (SWUs if you flight 30 segments), but just better handling, easier to get agent, treated better in irrops, etc.

AFAM-DFW

FWIW, I got EXP from Barclay CC spend. They gave me a generous limit and I was able to get EXP between Dec and Mar to qualify under the new system. In his case, I'd suggest heavy spend in the first statement month that ends in January so the spend counts towards 2023.

If he flies on award tickets, Upgrades are possible on award tickets with EXP. I even get upgrades on award tickets from BA points after adding the AA FF# to the record.

In general, I've found Barclay easier to deal with than Citi for personal cards but can't say on business.

The worth it question depends on his flight routes. It's great for my DFW-ABQ runs.

DataPlumber

Giving MDs financial, and in this case point advice, is wasted energy.

Amex does me just fine for my spend.

metallo

A321T

This may not apply to a business card, but my lesson from the last year is if you want to put serious spend on a card, don't get a no-annual-fee card. The low credit limit is a pain, having to carefully split purchases and at times, pay before the due date to free up credit to make another purchase. Though it had other nice perks, I ended up getting a pricier card primarily to get a higher limit.

355F1

Thank you to all that replied.

He has had Alaska's MVP Gold 75k for the last couple years and buys F about 1/2 the time.

He isn't going to be able to maintain that status any longer and moving $200k of spend to a new card isn't hard--he has almost $1mm in spend on his business platinum this year including a $180k purchase for some new lab equipment that didn't even get a fraud alert--so his credit is well established and there are no issues there.

He flies mostly PDX-LAX/PHX/NYC/DFW and likes having status for seat selection, in case of IRROPS, etc.

And getting AA's EXP status is the most viable option to maintain that level of status even if he flies AS 90% of the time.

jordyn

FWIW, I've found the opposite. I ended up cancelling my Barclay Silver card because Barclay decided a transaction was fraudulent (despite me trying to call them to authorize it while I was still in the store), required me to wait on hold talk to a supervisor to try to resolve the fraud flag and then for some reason required that I stay on the line with them and then answer an inbound call from them on the same phone at the same time (which was impossible for me to do at the time). After wasting about an hour trying to get the card unlocked, I just gave up and asked them to cancel instead. Apparently they didn't need me to prove my identity so elaborately to go ahead and do that so it got taken care of in about five minutes.

Barclay's fraud detection is more sensitive than any other card I hold and they are much more annoying to deal with when it goes off. Maybe they are good at other kinds of customer service, but I'm not sure I would ever apply for another Barclay card again based on my experience using both an Arrival+ and an AA Silver card.