American Express Business Platinum 100,000 Point Offer

The Offer

Direct link to offer (or help a reader and use a referral)

• Receive a sign up bonus of 100,000 points on the American Express Business Platinum card, bonus is broken down as follows:
  • 50,000 points after $5,000 in spend within the first three months
  • An additional 50,000 points after you spend an additional $10,000 within the first three months

Card Details

• Offer expires on January 25th, 2017
• Annual fee of $450 is not waived the first year
• Card earns at the following rates:
  • 2x points per $1 spent on purchases made directly from the American Express travel website
  • 1.5x points per $1 spent on qualifying purchases of $5,000 or more (up to 1 million extra points per year)
  • 1x points on all other purchases
• 50% of points back when redeemed for first/business class tickets or any fare class with your selected airline
• $200 airline incidental credit per calendar year
• Lounge access:
  • Centurion lounge access
  • International American Express lounge access
  • Delta SkyClub lounge access
  • Priority pass select membership
  • Airspace lounge access
• Internet Access:
  • 10 free GoGo passes
  • Unlimited Boingo internet access
• SPG gold status
• Fee Credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre✓
• No foreign transaction fees
• View these other hidden benefits
• You can only get the sign up bonus on American Express cards once per lifetime

Our Verdict

This is part of American Express trying to compete with the Chase Sapphire Reserve (as we rumored), this card now earns 1.5x points on single purchases over $5,000 (up to 1 million additional points per year) and comes with a 50% airline bonus as well – making points worth 2¢ per point as well. There are targeted bonuses of 150,000, but these are quite rare. It’s been possible to get 75,000 points with $5,000 spend recently (but YMMV) and last year we had a publicly available 150,000 point offer (that wasn’t supposed to be public) (that required $20,000 in spend).

[Read: Premium Cards Compared: Chase Sapphire Reserve, American Express Platinum & Citi Prestige]

Honestly, I’d be very careful with any manufactured spending on this card as I suspect American Express will ramp up their efforts to cut this practice out. Meeting $15,000 spend in three months will be out of reach for most people (especially since it’s an American Express card). Before applying for this card or asking common questions in the comments, I’d recommend reading this post on American Express cards. You may also be interested in learning about the hidden benefits of this card.

Personally I’m hoping that this isn’t all American Express have planned to compete with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I think the reason that card is so popular is that it’s easy to under the value proposition and the spend requirement isn’t insane. American Express’ style of having to choose a specific airline isn’t consumer friendly and it’s much harder to explain easily why this is a good deal. Through a massive spend requirement on top of this and American Express misses the mark for most regular people but perhaps they are going back to their roots and trying to target the ultra wealthy and businesses that wouldn’t bat an eye at spending $5,000 per month on a credit card.