Alright here's my situation. I am hoping for input on accomplishing my goal: To earn miles for free flights the fastest.

1) I charge about $30,000 a month onto a card for business expenses.

2) My current rewards system is through CHASE which follows this structure: $0.01 towards travel purchase for every $1.00 spent.

3) Since I started with this program in September 2010 I have spent about $250,000 and this has earned me $2,500 towards a flight.

What card / plan / system would you recommend for someone in my boat? Part of me feels like the 1 penny per one dollar spent situation could be improved upon...

Thanks!

PS: I have another $30,000 in expenses which I must wire to payee's every month because they refuse to get merchant accounts and bill my credit card. I could very easily double my miles if I could get these expenses onto a card. (Maybe cash advance / then wire, creativity?)

Welcome to FlyerTalk. You've come to the right place. I also recommend frugaltravelguy.com and his e-book for a more narrative explanation.

2% cash back cards currently available:
Capital One Venture Rewards Visa: 2% cash back redeemable for travel, $59/year, but first year is free
Fidelity AmEx: 2 WorldPoints/$
Fidelity Visa: 1.5 WorldPoints/$ for the first $15k/year; thereafter, 2 WorldPoints/$

WorldPoints are redeemable for $1 or 1 mile on Aeroplan (a good Star Alliance program), making the Fidelity cards the only cards that can earn 2 star alliance miles/$.

Hotels can cost more than airfare, so you may want to study their loyalty programs and credit cards too.

Especially consider Starwood AmEx and the various AmEx cards that earn American Express Rewards points, as both of these offer redemption above 1:1 for airline miles, and specials for converting these points to various programs roll around periodically, and these cards also tend to offer bonuses for high annual spending levels, such as the AmEx Open for Business offering a 50k points on the first 10k spend, and then, annually, an extra 25k points for $50k spend, which would effectively be 1.5 points/$, which can work out to more than 2 miles/$ using some mileage transfer specials.

For people like me with lower spends than you, the biggest benefits are in playing the sign up bonuses, so I will mention the topic just so you can be aware of it. You can get $500+/month by applying for the record high credit card signup bonuses that are being offered these days (for reasons I don't fully understand). If you want to average no more than 1 card per month, you can probably limit yourself to airline card offers of 50k miles for Star Alliance carriers and over 50k for all other cards unless there is something special about that program that would make it worth not waiting for their best offer. In the past 6 months we have seen the following offers:

75k/100k Citi American Airlines AmEx, Visa, business Visa (I got all 3)
up to 100k Capital One Rewards personal and business (was possible to get both)
50k United (most recently limited to their elites)
50k Continental
100k British Airways (new last week)
50k Lufthansa (new this week)
75k AmEx Rewards (new this week, targeted)

Regarding using credit cards to pay vendors that don't accept them directly, the possibilities that I can think of probably aren't worth your time, but I will mention the ones that come mind so you can decide for yourself.

If it's still worth the miles if you have to pay a ~2.5% surcharge, chargesmart.com (certain utilities and loans), williampaid.com (rent, don't see any prohibition on using it for commercial office space) and the various services for paying tax by credit cards. For the services that accept AmEx, you can buy gift cards from AmEx at a 1.6% discount, via bigcrumbs, subject to various published and unpublished limits. Do not use Citi cards to purchase AmEx gift cards, as Citi reclassifies them as cash advances. Other credit cards are generally OK and earn their usual purchasing rewards.

One possibility that I don't think I've seen mentioned before is getting your vendors to accept gift cards in payment, perhaps in exchange for a 1% bonus. AmEx has higher limits for purchasing "business" gift cards.

Looking toward the near future, you may want to keep on eye on the brewing alternative payment system turf war (PayPal, Amazon Payments, Serve, ZipWire, and Visa's new initiative with CashEdge and FiServ) as I would expect some loss leading promotions.

You can also buy dollar coins from the US mint for $1k/10 days, which you may be able to use to buy money orders from a particularly tolerant cashier. Also, in practice, some debit cards that earn rewards on PIN transactions that are not supposed to reward purchasing of money orders do in practice earn miles when the money order is bought from some stores (presumably because the bank can't tell what you spent the money on).

If you have some float with the money you are going to send to vendors, there may be a couple of additional opportunities. You might consider piping it through a brokerage account to qualify for their sign-up bonuses, or storing the float in BankDirect (but I worry about possible tax issues if the miles are "interest" rather than "rebates"). Also, I believe that Citi and BankDirect both have some small promotions where you get some miles for setting up bill pay, but I don't think the rewards get bigger for paying a substantial volume.

Anyhow, there are dedicated threads in the MilesBuzz section of FlyerTalk for almost every offer that I have mentioned above. I know I haven't done any of these topics justice, but I hope this overview will give you some ideas for further research. Happy reading.

Welcome to FT!

You have a great problem, but to help we need some more info....

Where do you live, where want to fly and where in the plane do you want to sit?

With the US legacy carriers that kind of spend rate will earn you a premium cabin Transcon every other month. A TransAtlantic up front every 3 or 4 months.

1% is too low these days. 1.5-2% cash back is good, or if you know you want to travel on certain airlines, getting the miles can be a better payoff.

I like AA miles the most, and use them extensively. In the past you could get multiple cards (about 1 a month, previously), with big sign up bonuses for 30k or more. I think there is one current promo for 75k or such, but don't think you can get as many cards these days.

I have vendors that won't take credit cards, or if they did, would raise the prices accordingly. It's just part of life, I guess. Find another vendor who will match the prices and take the card, or give up on it. Most small to mid sized businesses pay 2-4% on credit cards. That can be a ton of cash for a business that has tight margins.

Tell your vendors about Square, Inc.. They process CC payments through a smartphone and charge minimal transaction fees. No setup charges or monthly fees for the merchant, so it's a very low threshold to get them started.

Definitely sign up for one of the airline credit cards and the SPG credit card. In the past 6 months alone, you could have earned a nice first-class ticket from the US to Asia (assuming $150,000 spend with airline credit card) and essentially a week in a top SPG property (assuming $100,000 spend with SPG card).

The above value is far greater than the $2,500 cash back you've received.

Starwood Preferred Guest card I think is the clear bet.

Each 20,000 point transfer to airline gets you a bonus 5,000 miles, so after two months of business, you could have 75,000 miles (which gets you a lot of places in coach RT).

It's too bad the bonus isn't great for SPG, but I think it's best for your long-term ability to leverage the spending.

We can all post our opinions on what the best card is, but the question is, what do you want? Award travel? Status? Upgrades? Free/discounted paid travel? Another important question is where are you based and who do you fly?

unless the card is swiped, 3.5% and .15 is extremely expensive. 2.75 is just alright. A decent merchant processor can typically do better than that.

As the OP said, the vendors aren't keen on standard merchant accounts. I'm just offering an alternative.

the new Capital One Venture card earns .02 per $1 in points good for travel related expenses...that is twice as good as chase right there.
I agree that using the appropriate airline card for your needs and gateway with SPG card if possible will offer a bigger return, but right now Capital One Venture is my new favorite.

Get the Chase AARP card for the next 6 months - 5% Cash back

With an avg of $20k spend a month, you'll net $1,000.

I love this forum. I've only been here a couple of weeks. But, I've learned so much!

I have been wondering the same thing. My business charges are about $9K - $11K/month, not $30K, but I feel like I'm not getting much bang for my buck with Citibank Thank You points these days on my biz acct.

My husband and I just did a lot of the sign-up bonuses. I got 100K AA miles this winter, and C1 should have the matching 100K miles in my acct by the end of next week. Hubby got two of the 75K AA Citi cards that should be fulfilled by the end of May. I just got approved for the BA 100K card last night. Obviously, I'm all for getting as many miles as I can.

We have some big trips coming up. Our daughter is spending her next year of college in Japan and some of the summer in China. We need to fly her twice and we want to go visit next spring. Our son just moved to Colorado. (We live in New England.)

But I want to settle on a card for the business that will give me rewards that are very flexible (one of the reasons we've like the Thank You points so much) and a high rate. I like to have a bank of miles/points for our employees to use for special occasions and family emergencies, as well as our own family's use. We have 5 young adult kids and my mother still travels at 92-yrs-old. We go through a lot of points and miles.

The Citi TYP card used to have great bonuses. Now it is just 1 pt/$1. I'm new to C1, but like the idea of 2pts/$1.

I haven't really looked at the SPG, but now I will.

The Nomad has an extensive blog that might be helpful

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/unroad...arry-part-iii/

Thanks. That is a very helpful table.