ralphs

Seems bad for churners with only personal spend or MS.

Seems good for an actual small business with restaurant and ad spend, perhaps even a leading card? 4x restaurants and 4x ad spend is pretty dang good.

flyguy6

Called CS to see if I could upgrade but they didn't know if would qualify. Said to call back in a couple of days when they have more info. Will update when I find out.

uppereastsider

Seems like an incredible card for business card users who actually have a business with 100-150k in annual combined spend in shipping, advertising, hardware or cloud software (which I'll assume means web hosting and AWS and other large expenses)

For those who are churners or those who use small business cards for bonuses and maximizing personal every day spend, this card isn't attractive.

Also amazing is that the categories are determined by your spend, not by choosing a category

blitzen

RedSun

This card is the offering from "Small Business". What size of small business will have $100,000+ expenses on web hosting, shipping, advertising, IT needs? Your yearly business revenue has to be north of several $MM. Maybe some travel bloggers like DoC, TPG etc. Regular small business, like realtor, doctors, accountants, landscaper, dry cleaners, construction contractors etc. do not get anything even close to that. There are far greater number of those small businesses than the online bloggers.

mia

American Express defines small businesses as those with less than $5 million annual revenue. You don't need to max out the bonus categories to benefit from them , and even though some of the categories overlap with other cards you may want to segregate your business airfare and gasoline and dining from your personal expenses in the same categories.

RedSun

Business spending is all about spend management. If you hand out employee company credit card, you normally only give them only one card, for all travel related spending, like hotel, meal, association fees etc. You do not want to give them separate CCs for travel, meals, office supply etc, separately.

This is exactly how AmEx made its name, from issuing company travel related charge cards.

Only the business owner and his/her office manager has other types of CCs for central business spending.

Then we have the mass number of real small businesses, sole proprietors. The line between business and personal is blur. As long as you can keep track of business expenses, you can certainly use business card for personal purposes, vice versa. Most of the FT members here are in this category.

bigbellymonkey

They are going after E-Comm owner/Blogger/ Ad Agency

It`s quite normal for small E-Comm shop spends 20-30% of their revenue on Advertising. There are tons of small E-comm shops that`s doing 500k+ a year. In general, it`s not good to switch back and forth of your payment cards on FB/Google and other social media advertising sites. So once you chose your main CC, you probably will stick with it. So when an E-comm owner grows his business to 1M per year, or 200-300k ad spent a year, he`s likely still using the card. This card only gives 4x for
first 150k, so the rest of the ad spend will only get 1x. AMEX is playing a long game here and it`s working.

RedSun

How large is this E-Comm owner/Blogger/ Ad Agency in the Small Business sector? I guess no more than 5%? There are more doctors, realtors, individual contractors, restaurant owners etc.... And AmEx gets one of the top CCs just for this segment?

flyguy6

CS confirmed that I can not change to new BGR without paying the new $295 fee upfront. Going to pass on that offer.

milesforhire

Added wiki to the thread. Just summarized that first summary post with a correction. Added the 50k bonus offer info and a link to the lackluster public offer.

808traveler

Do you folks think it's worth getting the new amex BG card now for the extra 5k MR it gives per referral? Realistically i know that's only like an extra 10k MR per year.

The 50k MR bonus and 4x for airfare and US dining would be nice as well. The $295 first year fee, not so much.

As it stands I've already got an amex biz plat, a CSR, & a few other non-relevant cards. Was thinking of referring a few amex cards to my P2 with the new BG before year's out to get that extra 10k MR.

More long term, I'd probably try to triple dip the annual referral bonus cap, then close the card before/when the second AF hits. So basically I'd be getting an extra 30k MR for $295, since the first year AF isn't waived anymore. Is it worth it?

rover4618

Is waiting for the annual fee to post and then cancelling the card a wait to avoid paying the AF and also to fullfill the bonus requirement of not cancelling the card before the AF is due ?

Diplomatico

That's typically the advice if you intend to cancel - do so right after the AF posts. (And check to see if you have a retention offer prior to actually cancelling.)

rover4618

How do you check to see if you have a retention offer ?