American Express Blue Business Cash Card $500 Sign Up Bonus Available Via Incognito & Referrals
Update 8/22/19: Now possible to refer from more cards. Share & find referrals here. Do NOT share your referral in the comments below. Hat tip to intervested99
Update 8/11/19: Deal is now available via referrals as well, seems to be showing up everytime on referral. Share & find referrals here. Do NOT share your referral in the comments below.
The Offer
Direct link to offer (might need to open the link in incognito mode and might not always show up). Alternatively use a readers referral link found here.
- American Express is offering a bonus of up to $500. Bonus is broken down as follows:
- $250 after you spend $5,000 within the first six months
- $250 after you spend an additional $10,000 within the first year
Card Details
- Card earns 2% cash back on all purchases for the first $50,000 in spend every year, then 1% cash back on all purchases
- No annual fee
- 0% introductory APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months
Our Verdict
This is the first sign up bonus we’ve seen on this card. If you can get the bonus to show and meet the $15,000 minimum spend requirement I do think it’s worth going for. I doubt we see a bonus bigger than $500 anytime soon and while the minimum spend requirement is somewhat high at least the card also earns 2% back on those purchases in addition to the sign up bonus. I’ll be adding this to our list of the best business credit card bonuses.
Hat tip to BalthazarOfNavarre & Aloha808
“after you spend an additional $10,000…”
By my reading that’s 15k total, not 10k total – am I wrong? Also it’s 1 year for the second part of the bonus, not 6 months.
Yup, you’re right. Let me fix
Near the top, “an additional $15,000” should say “an additional $10,000”, right?
Yup
5.33% CB on $15K MSR not bad even better if you can float the 0% APR at near the CL for the 12 Months and earn another 2+% back
Seems like easy money – I’m barred by the Amex 2/90 day Credit card rule ATM but would love to float the $52K CL on those two credit cards instead.
Man this card could could be a real money maker if they are not stingy with CL.
Plus Amex business credit cards do not get reported to the personal credit bureaus. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/which-business-credit-cards-report/#Amex
Why wouldn’t one choose to put $15k spend toward a higher-rewarding sub for a different card? 5.33% is peanuts compared to decent signup bonuses.
Simplicity, 2% CB card with 0% APR for a year, no hard credit check or new account on personal credit report, good while waiting to get under 5/24. Those are my main reasons.
Most no AF cards have bonuses of $200 or less, so all of Avi’s reasons plus an AmEx card that I can keep for the foreseeable future and use when not working on another SUB is appealing. My other AMEXes (Delta & Hilton) had solid SUB but don’t offer much going forward to justify the AF.
PS this card would pay for itself even if all you did was overpay IRS taxes and then pay it off when you get your refund next spring. Fees are fully offset by the 2% plus you get float & SUB, then can use it as normal going forward.
Yes, with IRS payments and 0% APR borrowing that’s not being reported on personal credit reports there’s absolutely no barrier to meeting the minimum spend. Usually there’s some fuzzy math involving inflated point values, justifying annual fees, etc., but not with this one. It’s a no-brainer.
For those who need a higher credit limit on this card after approval, this method of instantly transferring credit online from a different Amex business card (and theoretically a personal card) still works: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/how-to-reallocate-your-credit-limits-with-american-express/
P2 received a lower limit than I expected so I won’t get the benefit of the 0% APR for a year but it will still be a good card for P2. Maybe in a few months we can request a credit line increase as linked in the linked article and then do the second tier bonus in one fell swoop.
If the SUB is still available when we meet that MSR I might get it for myself as well.
Regarding floating the balance – I understand Amex doesn’t report the balance on personal report. So, just to confirm, I still need to make the monthly minimum payment (or else its a delinquency), and as long as I do that, then nothing is reported on personal report?
Correct, just pay the monthly minimum. Nothing will be reported on your personal report.
A lot of people have more spend than new cards to spend on, so anything above the usual 2-2.5% is a worthwhile bonus.
Works really well using VPN+incognito if just incognito mode doesn’t work out.
What location or VPN do you use?
I use NordVPN and a US server. There are hundreds of them so if one doesn’t work, just use another one
Remember reading something about CGs not counting toward min spend. Was that for AMEX? Kinda want this card and bonus!
Correct. Amex requires “real” spend to earn sign-up bonuses. So forget any notions of buying $15K at grocery/office supply.
I’m not sure this is completely accurate. It has definitely been shown that AMEX doesn’t earn points or count for MSR on obvious purchases like Simon Mall or Giftcards.com, etc. But, buying GCs at a regular Grocery Store or Office Supply store should be fine, as long as that store doesn’t provide Level 3 data to AMEX, because AMEX would then have no way to know you bought GCs. Others can chime in hopefully to confirm.
Don’t most all office supply stores (lots of government/enterprise business) supply L3 data to the card issuers? That would especially be the case with Amex because they’re also the network?
And if, in other cases, Amex really wanted to, couldn’t they call the merchant to confirm whether a gift card was bought or not? This wouldn’t be as likely after you use the card for a while, but for MSR, they might resort to it if they’re suspicious for some reason (many $505.95 transactions at the drug store) in order to thwart churners, etc.
Wrong.
All the major office supply stores absolutely do provide v-e-r-y detailed L3 data to Amex – they can see EXACTLY what you’ve bought, 100% of the time. And they *will* deny all points for gift cards that they can and do see. As for grocery stores, some stores report L3 data, some don’t. If your store does, you won’t get any points for gift card spend.
The days of easy MS buying gift cards on any Amex-issued card are pretty much over. Get used to it.
I’m not exactly sure where we disagree, and why you think I’m wrong? All I said was, you should still earn points and credit toward MSR “as long as that store doesn’t provide Level 3 data to AMEX.” This is exactly what you were saying as well- if the grocery store does provide L3 data, you wouldn’t get points or MSR credit, implying that you agree that if it doesn’t provide it, you’d be good to go.
This doesn’t mean the days of MS-ing on AMEX are over, it just means you have to do it somewhere that doesn’t provide Level 3 data. IME, grocery stores are likely the best option, especially local ones. Hopefully most readers have at least one store in their area that doesn’t provide L3 data. As a reminder, you can always check if a store provides it after a purchase at that store- log in to AMEX and click on the purchase, and see if the item you bought is listed in the purchase details- if it says something like “200 VISA’ then that’s not a good sign. But if there is no specific item listing you’re more than likely safe.
#TIL Thank you
The BB+ card is better deal since it gives 2x MRs (worth roughly 3%) up to $50K.
$15K legit spend is a lot to earn $500 bones. Can MS on an existing 2% cb card and get $300. So is $15K legit spend worth the extra $200? Not in my book – I’ll put that towards a few other signup bonuses.
The 2x MR BB+ card offers $100 bonus with $3K spend and can be referred for another 10K MRs.
It’s an extra $500 on your $15k MS, not $200. Would be $800 total ($300 + $500) vs just $300 on your existing 2% card.
This will work for referral as well, plus you’d get a total of $800 from this ($500 bonus + $300 from spend).
I don’t even see this card in referral link, how can P2 apply if not seeing in the list of available cards after clicking referral link? If I navigate to All Business cards from top menu I can see it then (with the offer) but then it doesn’t mention anything about “you have been referred”
It does
This card didn’t appear for me at all yesterday through a referral link but I will try it again today.
I still don’t see it, using both the referral link and email methods in both Safari and Chrome in both regular and incognito browsing modes.
Make sure you’re clicking on a referral link that’s from a BBC card. Some of the links in the referral thread are general Amex referral links and should be ignored (and ideally removed).
I can’t get it to show even with a VPN 🙁
Me neither. Tried a bunch of browsers too.
What is the best way to make the offer show up?
Tried Incognito, VPN, different browsers, to no avail
Can you convert from this to blue business plus later?
No, you cannot change products between cards which earn MR points and cashback.
India VPN with tunnel bear and incognito worked for me
Didn’t show in India for me, but did in Thailand.
Was this from a different card or the Blue Biz Cash?
Instant approval with $9k credit line, Thailand VPN and Chrome incognito.
Looks like its been pulled or was released early
+1 I tried chrome, firefox, safari and my iPhone. Plus all of those with incognito. Plus all of those with the TunnelBear VPN in various locales. Yes, I spent over an hour working on this. Nada. Let’s hope it comes back!
Not dead yet guys… Just pulled it at 2:10 AM after numerous tries from Tunnelbear VPN (India, Hong Kong, etc.) / no VPN using IE, FF, and Chrome.
Finally pulled it using IE + Mexico VPN via Tunnelbear.
Not dead. It no longer shows from the Thailand IP that worked for me last night, but shows for Singapore via VPN in Chrome for MacOS. It takes an extra few seconds for the offer info to load between the APR info and the “Apply” button (at first it looks like there is no offer), so make sure the page is completely loaded before trying a different IP.
Just got this to pop up in Florida using Edge Private browsing, no VPN.
“pop up” is a four letter word when applying to amex.
Worked in Incognito from Orlando, FL (no VPN).
Went into Pending – have to call them tomorrow.
Thanks DoC!
I got it to pop up with a Miami VPN and incognito on chrome mobile.
Was able to pull this up incognito on an iPad Pro in Safari no VPN. No go on iPhone incognito with chrome/safari with or without VPN.
I used to purchase $500 VGC with either BCP or AMEX Gold for my “everything else” spend. Now I can use this as my new everything else card for the next year. 5.33% cash back on 15k is great.