American Express has sent out a survey asking questions about a possible new business credit card. The card is pitched as a ‘digital first points’ card and integrates with American Express’ Kabbage suite of business solutions (kabbage checking, kabbage funding, kabbage insights and kabbage payments). Unfortunately the earning structure and other details don’t sound that exciting:
- $95 annual fee
- Card earns 1.75x points per $1 spent on the top two categories each billing cycle and 1.25x points per $1 spent on all other purchases
Might be re-vamping the useless Business Green?
$90 in my opinion is too high for a annual fee during this time people are struggle as it is
$90 for a feel in my opinion is very high in this time in the world today due to the pandemic
They are likely looking at attracting small business owners with weaker credit who have their business checking account with Kabbage (Amex). This would allow them to cross-sell a product to their target market who otherwise might not be approved for an American Express card. There are plenty of small business owner’s with terrible or little credit but banks will approve them based on their deposit relationship and this at a quick glance appears to be that type of product.
Is Kabbage a sub-par checking product?
Its trash, like its name
This sounds exactly like a copy of the Chase Ink Premier. Info here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/untoldmiles/permalink/1636782226667189/
Given the unlimited employees benefit tied with the higher spend threshold, they want real businesses. But I can’t think of a lot of real businesses that would be okay with a virtual only card.
Hopefully they tack on a bunch of useless coupon book “credits”. Don’t have enough of those on their cards yet /s
Sounds like a watered down Citi Custom Cash card.
Also makes you wonder if AMEX is trying to see if they can get away with 1.75x points instead of double points as the default category bonus marker.
My immediate reaction is that this seems to be an inferior Blue Business Plus, albeit with some purchase protections and a flexible limit. Not sure how the process for filing a purchase protection claim would work with a “business” purchase vs a personal expense on something like the AMEX Plat, but if they really don’t care I guess this could be a passable keeper card for big purchases (though that seems a little too niche). The Kabbage features might be worth it for actual business owners?
Wondering why they are only offering virtual cards to employees versus the unlimited printed ones with the no-AF BBP? Hopefully that won’t become a trend.
EDIT: IIRC the BBP actually has a cap of around five employee cards, but they are physical cards.
The BBP, like most (all?) other US-based Amex business cards, has a cap of 99 employee cards. I am not aware of any Amex business card product that has a different cap.
My AMEX BBP literally says that there is a max of five employee cards when I try to add another employee. Does your portal say something else?
Looking at the terms of the card, I see that it says 99 additional cards is the maximum- maybe I need to contact AMEX if I try to go over 5? When I did the original post I wanted to try and be as fair to this new card as possible and so I chose the lesser of two numbers given to me.
That is the maximum number per online application. If you want to add more than that, you can repeat that process every week or so (there is a velocity limit for online employee card applications), or you can add up to 99 at once via a phone representative.
I currently have 19 employee cards on my BBP (most were added back in the golden days of AO scaling; in hindsight, I should have added a lot more), but they’re still sometimes useful for scaling things that require unique CC numbers for each purchase.
What’s the attraction over the flat 2x of BBP? I just don’t understand companies sometimes.
The BBP is only 2x up to $50k in spend, this is 1.75x on up to 150k in spend. It doesn’t matter for folks with a “business” but it may for actual businesses.
And the Business Gold is 4X on up to 150K.
On select categories. Not all purchases.