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The American Express Gold card has long been the staple credit card for points collectors, travel hackers, mileage nerds or whatever we are choosing to call ourselves these days (“staycationers”?, “Sainsburys shoppers”?. Anyway, there’s very good reason for that.

First of all, it’s free for the first year, and comes with some excellent benefits – including ongoing points earning, and two free lounge visits via Priority Pass.

However, the most attractive element is the sign-up bonus. You get 20,000 Membership Rewards points (convertible to 20,000 Avios points and therefore £160 to spend at Sainsbury’s, amongst many other things) if you sign up via a dedicated referral link and then spend £3,000 on the card in the first 3 months.

That’s an excellent offer, but it has just gone through the roof!

Until 12 May 2021, you will receive a massively improved 32,000 rather than 20,000 Membership Rewards points, so 32,000 Avios (or £256 to spend at Sainsbury’s). That is as good a bonus as I have ever seen on this card, and with it being free for the first year and then entirely cancellable, I can’t think of a better time to sign up to this card.

Anything else?

There are plenty of additional bonuses to the Amex Gold card, which you can read about here.

Note that you will earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spend on the card generally. In addition, if you spend £15,000 on the card in a  year, you receive 10,000 bonus Membership Rewards points. That means a £15K annual spend on the card would net you a massive 57,000 points (the 32K sign up bonus, the 15K points for the spend, plus the 10K bonus).

Some alternatives

Given that I think the Amex Gold is far and away the best value credit card to earn a good chunk of loyalty points without too much effort, I would always recommend having a good look at this card first.

However, there are bonuses (on existing sign up bonuses) on other Amex cards too, namely:

• A 50,000 rather than 35,000 points bonus on the Amex Platinum via a referral link
• A 30,000 rather than 26,000 Avios bonus on the BA Premium card via a referral link
• A 9,000 rather than 6,000 Avios bonus on the (free) BA Amex card via a referral link

Bear in mind that, although it only offers a modest number of Avios, the free BA card is a great option to sit in your wallet to enable you to earn Avios on spend without having to pay an annual fee. However, for bigger spenders or those seeking the BA Amex companion voucher, the Premium card is almost certainly worth the annual fee.

Note that in all the above examples, like the Amex Gold bonus offer, the additional bonus runs until 12 May 2021.