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Amex recently unveiled some incredible sign up bonuses for its Business Gold and Business Platinum cards. I imagine we’ll have more to say about the Gold soon, but I wanted to concentrate on the Platinum today, as its 100,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus is certainly eye-catching…

Didn’t you say 132,000 140,000 points sign up bonus?

Yep!

The headline welcome bonus is 100,000 Membership Rewards Points (which can be converted to 100,000 Avios, Virgin Points, KrisFlyer Miles, huge amounts of hotel points, etc, etc). There are a few things you can do though to sweeten the deal even further.

First, use a referral link when you apply for the card. This is mine, and you will receive an additional 5,000 points if you use it.

You have to spend at least £10,000 on the card in the first 3 months to trigger the bonus, which will get you another 10,000 points. So, we are up to 115,000 in total.

The most lucrative sweetener is slightly less well-known, but is an excellent way to boost your points haul.

Amex regularly offers small incentives for adding supplementary cardholders to your account. You would probably want to give someone the single free supplementary Platinum card that you are entitled to, so that they can share the various Platinum benefits like elite status with various hotel loyalty programmes, but Amex will give you 5,000 bonus points on top for doing so.

You can then add another four people as (free) Gold cardholders to your account and receive 3,000 5,000 bonus points for each of them. Add the 5,000 and the 20,000 (4 x 5,000) together, and you’ve got an additional 25,000 points.

When you put all the above together, your ‘real’ sign-up bonus is 140,000 Membership Rewards Points, rather than 100,000.

If you cashed out via Avios and Nectar, those points are worth an absolute minimum of 0.8p each.  That means that the 140,000 point sign up bonus is worth at least £1,120, which is frankly astonishing.

What are the downsides?

Obviously everybody would like a free and easy grand, so is there a catch? Not really, but there are some important details that will rule out a lot of people.

Eligibility

• The business has a current UK Bank or Building Society account
• You/The business have/has no County Court Judgements for non-payment of debt
• You are aged 18 or over
• You have a permanent UK home address
• You will not be eligible for any Welcome Bonus award if you currently hold or have held any Membership Rewards enrolled American Express Card in the past six months. Basically, if you already have a personal (or Business) Amex Gold or Platinum, or have had one in the last 6 months, you will not receive the welcome bonus. If you have any other Amex cards like a British Airways one, you will get the welcome bonus.

Minimum spend of £10,000 in 3 months

For most people, that’s a lot of money to spend – particularly on an American Express card. If you don’t regularly spend that sort of cash, make sure you have a clear plan for how you are going to manage it.

There are plenty of potential options, depending on how creative you want to be, but the crucial point is that you shouldn’t spend money on things you don’t want/need, just to chase a bonus. That would be entirely counter-productive

Annual fee of £595

This isn’t really a big deal, as you can get a pro-rata refund when you cancel the card (or downgrade it to Gold), but it does need to be paid up front, so is something to be aware of.

Bottom line

I’m genuinely amazed to see Amex offering such huge welcome bonuses in the UK. I’m also slightly annoyed that I didn’t cancel my Amex Gold when I got rid of my personal Platinum last year, as then I would soon be eligible for the welcome bonus…

If you are eligible and are confident you can hit the £10,000 minimum spend, this is an incredible deal. If you do want to apply, don’t forget to use a referral link for an extra 5,000 points! 

Note that an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the bonus for adding supplementary Gold cardholders was 3,000 points, rather than 5,000. That has now been corrected – many thanks to Cinerus in the comments for the correction!