As predicted, the new American Express Business Gold Card is now live.
Contents
Card Basics
- $295 annual fee, not waived first year
- Sign up bonus of 1 year free of G Suite basic for 3 users and up to 1 year of ZipRecruiter Standard
- Card earns 4x points on the two categories your business spends the most each billing cycle, from the following list (up to $150,000 in combined purchases each calendar year):
- U.S. purchases at restaurants (this is an added category over the old Business Gold Rewards card)
- Airfare purchased directly from airlines
- U.S. purchases for advertising in select media
- U.S. purchases at gas stations
- U.S. purchases for shipping
- U.S. computer hardware, software, and cloud computing purchases made directly from select providers
- 25% points back after you book a flight with pay with points
Our Verdict
I’m trying to stay open minded with this new card, but this just seems absolutely awful to me? The annual fee has increased by $120 and categories have gone from 3x to 4x (although you do get two categories instead of only one) plus the 25% back on points. For some people this card might be worth keeping long term, but the sign up bonus is absolutely awful. I’m so glad we were able to warn readers about these changes and suggest they sign up for offers of 60,000–75,000 points yesterday. I can’t see this offer being a long term winner for American Express.
great card for real businesses. 5% back for online advertising with my CS plat? Yes pls.
Just noticed a different sign up bonus for the Amex biz gold. 35k MR AND 1 year of G suite and 1 year of ZipRecruiter. https://creditcard.americanexpress.com/d/business-gold-charge-card/
With the waived AF I’m thinking of getting one from a P2 referral just for the 4x gas.
Someone commented below that you could no longer generate referral links from the old Business Gold Rewards card. Well I was looking at what referral options I have for P2, and just found it is showing 20K referral bonus and I am pretty sure it used to be just 10K.
Opens up a 50K / $5K offer on the new Business Gold, and offers on the rest of the amex cards as well.
The 20K referral bonus it generates can make it a worthwhile prospect if you think about it.
we will see if this is truly a new product. gonna wait for DP to app new BGR while still holding old BGR and get the bonus. dont think RAT would be OK with it but will see. mssg popped up for me tho.
i think it’s just perspective. If amex is really focused on businesses and not just personal spend then this makes sense as the extra 1x more then before earned with some of these categories more then pays for the annual fee increase. Just shipping expenses for many businesses can be quite large to more then cover the annual fee increase and come out ahead.
it seems the reason they are making this thing a new product is that folks have to convert the old one into this one, then have to pay annual fee prorated. it would be extra income to AmEx.
Doc cannot say thanks enough for yesterday’s post allowing player 2 to get this before the fee went up. With the BBP referral it’s not bad at all for $5K. Would be royally pissed had I not known this was occurring.
Glad to help
I self referred and got approved for the old Business Gold Rewards no AF yesterday. Thanks Doc!!
As others have said here, multiple American Express proles via multiple channels have stated that this new product is just that – a new product and that no conversion option exists.
I’m curious as to why they made that choice. Although not particularly well supported, it’s obvious that a great many people made the assumption that a transition path would exist here as it did for the personal version.
And, to add awfulness upon awfulness:
One can no longer generate referral links to gain referral bonuses if holding the now-retired Business Gold Rewards card.
One cannot refer persons to the new Business Gold card.
This may be a temporary thing, as visibility of Amex Offers against the BGR card has been ask stable as a drunk on a balance beam all day thus far.
You *can* convert. I did earlier today, though they will prorate the AF.
Clearly you had a better class of prole answering your questions than I did! 🙂
Wow, crazy. I’m surprised that they wouldn’t just do everyone, as I’m sure they want that extra AF. I ordered Rose Gold for everyone as the guy said it looks like “copper” not rose. We’ll see!
Looks like referrals are working now. Showing 20K referral for me from my BGR, and it opens with the new Bus Gold in the list for 50K / $5K.
same goes for me. shows 50k referral bonus for p2 using my bgr link. she just applied and also got the $0 annual fee first year.