New Universal American Express Referrals Program, Now Crosses Over to ANY Card

We wrote last month about the change whereby Amex allows us to refer across an entire family of cards, e.g. if you have the Hilton Aspire you can refer to the Hilton Ascend. However, I noticed today poking around in the referral links that they now seem to allow referrals across ALL cards, e.g. from a cash card to a points card and vice versa. They even allow crossing over between personal to business.

• Here’s a direct link to find your Amex referral links.

When clicking through a referral link, you’ll see at the bottom of the page an option to check out any other Amex card, even crossing over from personal to business. And when clicking on any option, it shows clearly that this card is part of a “Referral offer”.

The terms explicitly states:

Your friend will receive a referral bonus if you are approved for any of the Cards with a referral offer.

Note: The new universal referrals do not apply to all cards. Cobrands like SPG and Hilton still have the old family rule whereby you can refer to another card in the family but not outside the family. However, Amex’s own cards are all under one umbrella, even those that earn different kinds of rewards, e.g. a cash card to a points card.

Apparently, even cobrands like Hilton have expanded their referral options: whereby previously you were not able to cross over between personal and business, you now can. [Another note about cobrands: if you have a non-branded Amex card you can refer someone TO an SPG card, but if you have an SPG card you can’t refer someone to a non-SPG card.]

It seems like currently ANY of your cards can refer to ANY other card. This is hugely lucrative for someone with many referrals for a single card as you can now max out the referral offer on each of your cards for that card which you have many people to refer to.

Where it starts getting murky is what happens when you refer someone from one family to another, e.g. you refer from your Blue Cash and they end up getting a SPG Business card. I assume you’d get the $75 cash Blue Cash referral offer as it’s possible you don’t even have an SPG account.

You should probably just use the best from all your referrals, e.g. if you have a Blue Cash for $75 and a Platinum for 20,000 Membership Rewards, use the Platinum referral to refer someone for Blue cash. That way, you should get a 20,000 bonus.

The limit should be per card, e.g. you should be able to get up to 55,000 points for referrals on your Platinum card, another 55,000 on your Gold card, and another 55,000 on your Green card – if you have all those.

Update 10/6/18: TPG got official word from Amex which confirmed the change and stated that “in general” the referral bonus you’ll get will be based on the card you referred from.