Has ‘£5 back on a £20 Amazon purchase’ appeared on your American Express accounts?

American Express and Amazon have launched another of their occasional offers.  And it is a generous one.

If you are targeted, you will receive £5 cashback on your next £20+ purchase on Amazon made with your American Express card.

To see if you are targeted, you need to log into your online American Express account and look at the offers tab for EACH card you have.  You should also look under any supplementary cards which you have registered.

If you see the Amazon offer, click ‘Save To Card’.  The offer is “only” valid for the first 74,000 people who save it.

We have the offer on:

• my Platinum
• my wife’s supplementary Platinum
• my wife’s Gold

I do not have it on:

• my BA Premium Plus
• my Starwood Amex
• my wife’s Starwood Amex (which now has no offers at all)
• my wife’s BA Premium Plus

…. which means £15 of free money for us.

Here are the official rules, but it may not work this way in practice:

• Offer intended for UK Cardmembers only.
• Offer only available online
• Offer only applies to spend made in Great British Pound (GBP) on the Card to which the offer is saved, including an American Express Card loaded into a mobile payment wallet.
• Offer does not apply to spend on other Cards you might hold and is not valid for transactions made using Payment Aggregators.
• Only one £5 statement credit per UK Card.
• Rewarded credit may be reversed if qualifying transaction is refunded or cancelled.
• Offer only available to the first 74,000 Cardmembers who save the offer to their Card.
• Credit should appear on your billing statement within 5 days from qualifying spend but may take up to 90 days from 9 December 2018.
• Offer not valid on orders paid on finance.
• Offer is only intended for the targeted recipient of this offer.
• Spend must be billed to your Card account by 9 December 2018 to be eligible for this offer. If Amazon does not charge your Card during this period, e.g. because of a delay in dispatching your goods, you may not be eligible for this offer.
• Offer not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime.
• Offer only valid on orders delivered to the UK.

I am unsure about the ‘not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime’ rule.  I don’t know how American Express can tell the difference.  That said, for 100% security you may want to have it delivered normally instead.

Do gift card purchases work?

The easiest way of triggering the bonus should be to purchase a £20 e-gift card, emailed to yourself and then applied to your account.

It should also work if you top-up your Amazon account with £20 of credit.  Topping up your account means that you end up with a £20 balance at Amazon and, next time you buy something, the £20 is used first before your credit card is charged for the balance.

I ordered a £20 e-gift card for myself and it appeared to work.  I got an immediate confirmation from American Express that I had triggered the offer ‘if your transaction meets the offer terms’.  I should know in a few days if the £5 credit will be applied and will report back.

You can buy an e-gift card for yourself, or top up your balance, via this page.

The Amazon home page is here.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2023 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:

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 9th January 2024, you will receive 30,000 Membership Rewards points (convertible to 30,000 Avios) with American Express Preferred Rewards Gold. You receive 25,000 points if you spend £3,000 in three months and a further 5,000 points if you hold the card for 15 months. You can apply here.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 9th January 2024, you will receive a huge 100,000 Membership Rewards points (convertible to 100,000 Avios) with The Platinum Card. You receive 75,000 points if you spend £10,000 in six months and a further 25,000 points if you hold the card for 15 months. You can apply here.

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:

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.