Amazing Deal Alert: Amex Business Gold Rewards Card

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.

Offer expired on May 9th, 2013:

Although the current public offer on the Amex Business Gold Rewards card has been 50,000 points for a few weeks now, it looks as though my affiliate link is actually generating an offer for 75K Membership Rewards points for the same $5,000 spend in 3 months and the annual fee of $175 is waived the first year. I'm not sure how long this will last, so if you have been considering this card for the bonus, get it today before it's gone.

Screenshot the offer when you apply so you are sure to get the full bonus at this application link. When American Express offers limited-time bonuses this high on this card, they last anywhere from a day to a about a week, so if you've been waiting for a high bonus on it, today's your day.

Even better - the last time the bonus was 75,000 points back in March, you had to spend $10,000 in 4 months, so your spending requirement is just half that now.

Before you apply, remember, per the terms and conditions,“Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have had this product or any Business Gold, Green or Platinum Card account within the last 12 months.” So if you’ve opened another Amex OPEN business charge card (NOT a personal card) in the last 12 months, you can’t apply for this one.

However, you should still be able to qualify for this offer if you just have Amex’s personal cards like the Platinum or the Premier Rewards Gold, or Amex’s other business cards like the Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express or the Gold Delta SkyMiles® Business Credit Card from American Express.

Like the Premier Rewards Gold card, this card has a similar 3/2/1 spend bonus structure where you earn 3x points on airfare, 2x points on purchases in the U.S. for advertising in select media, gasoline at U.S. stand-alone gas stations, and shipping and 1x points on other purchases. Update: Now you will also earn 2x on purchases made with from select computer hardware, software and cloud computing providers.

Remember, even if you don’t have a major business you can still qualify for business cards like this one though American Express OPEN cards are exclusively for business owners. Most issuers will let you get a business credit card by applying with your own social security number if your business is a sole proprietorship (a business run by one person). Plus, since Amex is going to run a credit check anyway, it should be possible for you to apply for a personal card on the same day if you were considering getting a personal Amex card anyway, so it counts as a single hard credit pull.

To read about great ways to maximize Membership Rewards points and why I find them so useful, check out my Top 10 post on reasons I like Membership Rewards cards, but one of the major reasons is the program’s numerous transfer partners, giving you the ultimate flexibility when redeeming your points.

But just as a quick example, British Airways is a transfer partner of Amex Membership Rewards, and is currently offering a 35% transfer bonus from Amex to BA Avios until June 7. So if you can meet the minimum spending requirement quickly and ask Amex to post your points or get a points advance that the bonus will go towards paying off, you could then transfer them to BA for a total of 102,500 Avios for spending just $5,000 on the card. Compare that to the most recent 100,000-Avios sign-up bonus on the British Airways Visa, which required you to spend $20,000 to score the full 100k bonus, and this looks like a much better deal.

75,000 Amex points also equates to $750 as a base value if you use Amex's Pay With Points feature rather than transferring to a travel partner program - that way you still get mileage and elite credit on any flights you purchase, which is a pretty great value for a card with no annual fee for the first year.

Transfer Partners

75,000 Membership Rewards can be worth a tremendous amount of value thanks to the program’s 21 airline and hotel transfer partners which include:

Airlines
Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan, Singapore, All Nippon Airlines
Oneworld: British Airways, Iberia, Cathay Pacific
Skyteam: Delta, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Alitalia, Aeromexico
Other: Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, El Al, Frontier, JetBlue, Hawaiian Airlines

Hotels
Starwood 3:1
Hilton 1: 1.3
Best Western 1:1
Jumeirah 23:1

If you are considering doing an app-o-rama to get multiple cards before this offer expires, the other top rewards credit card deals on the market are on my Top Deals page.

Some readers have reported having trouble seeing the 75K offer, but I also just clicked on it through this post on my iPhone and it populated for me, so you can always try applying through your phone.

Share your experiences in the comments below.

Hat tip: TPG reader Nick, who first saw the 75K offer on the application landing page.