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Get £5 back on a £10 purchase via American Express ‘Shop Small’

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Shop Small is back!  If you have an American Express credit or charge card (unless it is a Lloyds Avios one), you can make big savings on your Christmas shopping from tomorrow (Saturday) until 16th December with ‘Shop Small’.

American Express is the major UK sponsor of a scheme called ‘Shop Small’, designed to encourage you to shop in local independent stores instead of major chains.

Starting on Saturday and running until 16th December, you will receive £5 cashback on EVERY transaction you make for £10 or more at a participating ‘Shop Small’ business.

American Express Amex Shop Small

There are very few rules apart from the fact that you can only get one £5 cashback per shop per card. You can, of course, register multiple American Express cards if you have more than one.

It is a simple process:

You MUST register your credit or charge card before making a ‘Shop Small’ purchase

You can register British Airways, Harrods, Costco, Starwood, Gold, Platinum, Platinum Cashback, Amex Rewards and Green American Express cards by going to the American Express website, logging in and looking under ‘My Offers’ on the statement page.

Note that Corporate and pre-paid Amex cards do not qualify.  Lloyds Avios Rewards cards are also now blocked.

You can register supplementary cards (an additional card held by your partner on the same account) as long as it has a different card number to your main card and has its own separate Amex log-in.

Find participating small shops

The main Shop Small site is amexshopsmall.co.uk which contains a link to an interactive map where you can find participating shops in your area.  You will also often see a Shop Small sticker in a shop window.

Beware that this map, in previous years, has not been accurate. Often in a good way (some shops not featured give the credit) and often in a bad way (shops on the map are closed or don’t even accept Amex).  Your best option is to use your Amex whenever you can during the Shop Small period and see what hits.

It is worth noting that it is not just sellers of ‘things’ who are taking part. You will find cafes and even the occasional pub taking part!

Make a qualifying purchase of £10 or more

You can make one purchase per registered card per shop that is taking part in ‘Shop Small’.

You should receive an email or phone notification soon after making your purchase, although you shouldn’t panic if you don’t.

A £5 credit for every £10 purchase will be added onto your credit card statement within a few days.

For clarity …. this promotion is fully funded by American Express as part of its campaign to encourage more small shops to accept the card.  It is not funded by the shop so you shouldn’t feel guilty about taking part.

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Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways American Express, Marriott Bonvoy American Express

Comments (243)

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

  • Binks says:
    1 Dec1 December 05:56

    Looking forward to taking advantage of this promotion with my four Amex cards (plat, gold cc, SPG and BA). Some great lunch options in the list for those who work in the city.

    • Nigel the pensioner says:
      1 Dec1 December 06:41

      Yes La Dame de Pic is included and boy, your £5 credit is going to make a big dinge in your lunch bill here isnt it?!!
      I will use the 6 AmEx cards (3 Centurion) to do 6 £10 transactions for fuel for the Range Rover. Then i will take each of the other 3 cars and do the same at different Shell stations. Thats what i call a decent return on essentials. I will then find an Aldi and buy 6 bottles of champagne on 6 separate transactions obviously, thereby knocking £5 off an already cheap but perfectly good for quaffing, champagne!
      Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas…. even here in Bahrain, especially at the Ritz Carlton – the Hampton by Hilton was fully booked 🤣🤣🤣.

      • Polly says:
        1 Dec1 December 06:58

        Aldi not included in shop small is it Nigel? Or is that another offer? Just checking after reading your post…

        • Shoestring says:
          1 Dec1 December 07:41

          Nige – have you checked that Shell petrol filling stations & Aldi are in Shop Small??? 🙂

          If not, you won’t get a bean from Amex.

          TOP TIP for all – it’s always best to *AVOID CONTACTLESS PAYMENT* for the Shop Small promotion. It’s not that contactless doesn’t work – it can & often does work – but it’s prone to not triggering the success email from Amex/ failing & then you have to phone/ chat their Customer Service team to try to get it added on later.

          & judging by last year, Amex CS team got very mean in this regard, eg telling you to wait 90 days when we all know that for Shop Small at least, a success email always means it worked fine, but no success email & no statement credit within a couple of daus means it didn’t.

        • Alan says:
          1 Dec1 December 09:52

          I think Aldi one is also only online?

      • Alex W says:
        1 Dec1 December 08:02

        Wow Nigel, we didn’t know you had a centurion card! You haven’t mentioned it before.

      • Anna says:
        1 Dec1 December 15:02

        There is an Aldi offer currently, £10 off £70 spend on line. I can’t see it would really qualify for shop “small”.

    • Simon says:
      3 Dec3 December 00:23

      Breakfast and burgers is good especially as you can spend exactly £10!
      Assenheims. Mmmm, chicken.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    1 Dec1 December 06:11

    With the help of a couple colleagues, I’ve created a map of central London pubs and restaurants (taken from the Amex map). It’s not intended to be comprehensive, but lists plenty of places that we like that are (in theory) participating. It overlays nicely onto the Google Maps app.

    https://goo.gl/maps/93G6yaJiPZo

    • johnny_c-l says:
      1 Dec1 December 08:20

      Thanks Andrew, this will come in handy. Much more user friendly than the buggy Amex map.

    • Jon says:
      1 Dec1 December 08:55

      Thanks Andrew. If anyone likes a good IPA and/or pizza, I can recommend the pelt trader near cannon street!

    • Gary says:
      1 Dec1 December 13:59

      Thanks for this Andrew – much better than the Amex map! How can we contribute to this list?

      • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
        1 Dec1 December 15:14

        I’ll keep an eye on comments here.

        • Sam says:
          1 Dec1 December 22:16

          Ciao Bella on Lambs conduit street (Bloomsbury area) is an amazing Italian place, they are on the list. Well worth a visit.

  • Polly says:
    1 Dec1 December 06:18

    Managed w h Smith and Superdrug yesterday. And plenty of options near us, so it will be fun. Esp the snooty Italian restaurant near us, who sniffs loudly when we ask for 2 bills. Obviously plebs in his mind. Love it…and Cook too. Genghis, you will be chasing them too, if l remember correctly!

    • Alex W says:
      1 Dec1 December 06:39

      Really? WHS and Suoerdrug not exactly small shops, if you get £5 credit from them then that’s an extra £70 for me!

      • Polly says:
        1 Dec1 December 06:52

        Sorry to burst your bubble Alex, meant amex offers ie..whs spend 15 get 5 back, and superdrug spend 40 get 10 back! Handy for amazon and whs cards. Not bad.

      • FlyUpTop says:
        1 Dec1 December 07:59

        Think they mean the existing amex offers on these two outlets.

    • Genghis says:
      1 Dec1 December 07:15

      I’ve told this story on here before but one of the waitress at Poppies still recognises me as the man with many cards 😬 We have a laugh about it. Like last year Konditor and cook on there for a few Boston brownies and Paul Young chocs does these nice mince pie things. New for this year is Laduree on Cornhill; my colleagues are happy about that one. Now off on a SS crawl…

      • Genghis says:
        1 Dec1 December 07:46

        Got my dentist and hygienist appt during SS. They’re more than happy for me to pay in £10 batches.

      • Sam says:
        1 Dec1 December 07:58

        Genghis, I can’t see Laudree on the map, how did you know that? I work just off Cornhill so good to know. Thank you.

  • Ajay says:
    1 Dec1 December 06:47

    Hi, I have just logged onto my supplementary card account online but get no options to include this offer, currently showing 0 offers. Anyone else have this issue?

    • Polly says:
      1 Dec1 December 07:00

      Can take a while to load offers. My oh plat took several days to load even one offer. And that was main card holder.

  • JG says:
    1 Dec1 December 07:01

    Offer not showing up on either of my (only a few weeks old) Amex issued cards. Clicking through the link just takes me to my Offers page which doesn’t list this. Maybe I’ll call Amex later…

  • Louise says:
    1 Dec1 December 07:32

    Last year I had quite a few transactions that they never got the discount.
    I then churned the cards and the money still never appeared, even tho the customer service said it would within 90 days on closed accounts.
    Worth keeping in mind if you are thinking of closing a card soon

  • Sam says:
    1 Dec1 December 07:54

    I don’t understand the Oyster top up point stated on the map that one of the readers did. Is it that you top up your oyster at a shop small participating convenience store? What is meant by batching them up and making sure the shop applies them in one go?

    • Polly says:
      1 Dec1 December 09:14

      Yes

      • Sam says:
        1 Dec1 December 09:31

        Thanks Polly. It was the latter part that confused me, batching them up and ensuring shop puts them through in one go. If you have two oyster cards and two amex cards, to my mind the best way is put 10 On one oyster with one amex and the other 10 On the second oyster with the second amex at that retailer so it’s two separate transactions…Is that right?

        • kk says:
          1 Dec1 December 10:32

          No.
          If you are topping up a *new* Oyster which hasn’t been used you should top up just once, in the whatever amount you had charged on your cards (5 cards, £10 each, so a single £50 top-up).

          If you start adding credit to Oyster multiple times (without using it in between) then AML algorithm kicks in and TfL may block the card (you can still unblock it by calling them but it is a tedious process)

    • AJ says:
      1 Dec1 December 09:39

      Hi Sam, I’m the creator of the map. By ‘batching up’, I mean getting the shop owner to top up your oyster with the sum of all your £10 amex spends in one go, rather than doing x £10 oyster topups. So TfL only see 1 topup on your oyster card.

    • Nick says:
      1 Dec1 December 10:00

      Be careful! Last year I got all my Amex cards blocked for 3 months. For multiple purchases within minutes at the same retailer

      • kk says:
        1 Dec1 December 12:51

        Hi.
        What do you mean, “for 3 months”? Why couldn’t you call the customer services?

        • Nick says:
          1 Dec1 December 12:53

          Trust me. Plenty calls emails and escalations. If rob is keen, I can share direct that experience

          Very clear – when things go wrong , Amex can be a mess internally Departments don’t communicate. Was a shambles

      • johnny_c-l says:
        1 Dec1 December 14:42

        I had half a dozen Oyster cards blocked last year as they deemed the top ups as potentially dodgy. Had to email copies of receipts and card statements to TfL.

  • AspirationalFlyer says:
    1 Dec1 December 08:01

    Going for a tasty breakfast at my local cafe shortly which has been part of the promo in previous years. Thanks Amex!

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