Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Up to 50,000 – yes 50,000 – free Membership Rewards points for Amex Platinum holders

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If you have an American Express Platinum card, this is a fantastic deal.

If you don’t have an American Express Platinum card, this deal may well persuade you to get one – especially as it runs until the end of February.

Take a look at this.

American Express is offering 10,000 Membership Rewards points for every supplementary card you add to your Platinum charge card account.

This is a phenomenal deal.  10,000 Membership Rewards points gets you 10,000 Avios amongst many other things.  More importantly, supplementary cards are FREE.

You can take a look at the Membership Rewards catalogue hereThe airline redemption partners are here.

If you don’t currently have any supplementary cardholders on your Platinum charge card, you could earn 50,000 bonus Membership Rewards points by adding the maximum five people.

As an Amex Platinum charge card holder, you are allowed to issue FIVE supplementary cards.  The first one will come as a Platinum card and will receive ALL of the Platinum card benefits.  They will receive their own Priority Pass for airport lounge access and can claim their own Starwood Gold, Club Carlson Gold and Le Club Accorhotels Platinum status cards.  They also receive Eurostar lounge access.

The other four supplementary cards will be Gold or Green.  These cards will benefit from the Platinum travel insurance coverage but do not qualify for any hotel status cards or a Priority Pass.  You also do not receive the Lounge Club airport lounge access card that comes with a standalone Amex Gold.

Here are a few other points to remember:

All of the charges on the supplementary cards appear on YOUR statement as the main cardholder.

You, as the main cardholder, are legally liable for ensuring they are paid.

Supplementary cardholders must be over 18.

A supplementary cardholder is not treated as being an American Express cardholder in their own right.  This means that, if they later choose to apply for their own Gold or Platinum card in their own name, they will be treated as a new customer and will receive a sign-up bonus.

Whilst you are liable for any spending by supplementary cardholders, American Express will still do ID checks on your applications.  If the applicant does not have a UK bank account and/or does not appear on the electoral roll, on the council tax register and/or does not have other credit cards in their own name, they are likely to be refused.  I tried and failed to get a supplementary Amex card for our nanny a couple of years ago.

As you can see from the application page, this offer runs until February 28th 2015.

If you do not already have a Platinum charge card but had been thinking about it, this may swing it for you.  As well as the 30,000 Membership Rewards points you receive for signing up, you could also receive a further 50,000 points for issuing five supplementary cards.  My full review of Amex Platinum can be found hereThe application page for new cardholders is here.

Note that you MUST use this link to apply for your supplementary cards in order to receive the 10,000 bonus points.  Any other link, including adding supplementary cards during the application process for a primary card, will not work.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (205)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Rob says:

    £20.14? Do they really make enough money to fund that?!

    Unless I can split the £20.14 with readers I can’t (morally) justify running a post when another 500 Clubcard points sign-up could be around the corner.

  • Scott Nelson says:

    Raffles, broken link for the 10,000 free points. I get a 403 error 🙁

    Any ideas?

    Thanks

    Scott

  • Pol says:

    Anyone know when the points post? Do you have to register and use the card in order to get the points?

    • Rob says:

      The timeframe is in the T&C’s at the bottom of the page isn’t it? Not sure if you need to spend on the card.

  • stuart says:

    hi all,
    i applied for 5 supplementary cards almost week ago and have not heard anything, i cant see any acknowledgement on my account , nor did i get any confirmation email .

    is this normal or do you think that i need to reapply .thanks

    • Pol says:

      I applied for 3, 1 for my 22 daughter who still lives at home and 1 each for my parents at another address. I heard nothing, no email to confirm applying or to say They’d been approved. My daughters arrived if the post yesterday but still no sign of the others. If you log on to your account and click the contact Amex button is has a drop down menu asking which card you want to contact them about, you can see all supplementary card there(I can see my parents’ cards even though they haven’t received them.) I find this a little concerning as my daughter registered hers and got the pin online with just her card, she needed no details from me. If Amex don’t tell you you’ve been approaved someone else could end up with the card and be happily spending away with you none the wiser until you get the bill!

      • stuart says:

        thanks for the reply Pol….it certainly is little concerning and if i am approved i will be even more worried about the cards not coming to my own address than i was before.
        i couldn’t locate the drop down menu, does the button say ‘contact amex’ or ‘contact us’. thanks

        • Pol says:

          contact us. Then click email American Express on the right of the next screen and go to compose a new message to them, there is a drop down box that says “This message refers to *” and a drop down box to choose which card. If your supplementary cards have been approved they should appear here.

  • Gill says:

    I added a supp card last week. The card has arrived but no points added yet.

  • Lawro says:

    Applied for 4 additional cards, but they told me they can’t give me a decision now but will send note in the post in the coming days.
    Anyone else had this? Is this normal?

  • Lawro says:

    Anyone have any idea how long they take to post these bonus points?

  • Ben says:

    Has anyone received the 10k MR points yet?

    The cards arrived within a couple of days but no sign of the MRS points.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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