50,000 Bonus Points Targeted at Amex Business Platinum Users

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

If you currently hold The Business Platinum Card from American Express OPEN, you'll definitely want to take a close look through the email that's arrived in your inbox in the last 24 hours. That's because a number of Business Platinum cardmembers are reporting being targeted for an extremely sweet spending bonus right now.

The Points Guy Editor-in-Chief Zach Honig is one of the lucky ones who received the following from American Express:

As you can see, there's no link to enroll in this offer; you're only eligible if you received the email directly from American Express, and it only appears on the business version of the Platinum card — not the personal one. If you're looking for it in your inbox, the subject format starts with your first name, followed by the words "earn 50,000 extra points with your Business Platinum Card®."

For those targeted, the first half of this offer presents an excellent opportunity to pick up a large haul of 40,000 Amex Membership Rewards points for only $5,000 in spend. You'll effectively be getting 8 bonus points per dollar on those purchases (plus the 1x base point as well). Whether the additional 10,000 points is worth spending another $5,000 is a tougher call, though it does represent a total of 3x points per dollar spent if you include the base dollar on all purchases.

Remember also that if you spend $5,000 in a single transaction on the Business Platinum card, you get 1.5x points for that purchase instead of just 1 point. That would add an extra half-point per dollar to your total if you're able to take advantage of the offer that way. You're not required to spend in one shot to earn this bonus — the terms and conditions state that "qualifying purchases on all cards under a particular account (including the Basic card as well as any Additional or Employee cards) are combined for the purpose of calculating the amount of spending that counts towards the spend requirement for each tier."

There doesn't seem to be any pattern as to whom is targeted with this offer. Some folks who received it are close to their annual fee for the year, but others are not. How much you've used the card in the past doesn't appear to have much effect either. Zach reports he hasn't used his card in months, but others who received it say they use their Business Platinum regularly.

Are you one of the lucky ones? Let us know in the comments below.