What benefits come with the Amazon Business American Express cards?

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Amazon Business and American Express launched two Cards last Autumn aimed at the small business market.

As we covered in our article last week there is currently a special offer running on the Amazon Business American Express Card:

• The annual fee, usually £50, has been waived for the first year*

• You will receive a £25 Amazon Gift Card upon approval, and there is no minimum spend required to trigger the bonus

What do you earn on your day to day spending?

You will receive Amazon Rewards worth 1.5% of your spend on UK purchases at Amazon Business, Amazon.co.uk and Whole Foods Market.

Alternatively, you can select 60 additional days to pay on each purchase at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Business UK and Whole Foods Market UK. You can toggle your reward on a transaction by transaction basis if required, which gives you total flexibility.

You will receive 0.5% back on all other spending made on the Card, paid in Amazon Rewards.

You can find out more about the Amazon Business American Express Card, and its sister the Amazon Business Prime American Express Card, here.

Whilst you should be focusing primarily on the rewards, since you need an incentive to switch to this product, I want to look today at some of the other benefits of these Cards.

What other benefits come with the Amazon Business American Express cards? Let’s take a look.

You can get 60 or 90 day payment terms on your Amazon purchases

If your business could do with a cashflow boost, both of the Cards come with a special feature.

Instead of receiving Amazon Rewards on your purchases from Amazon, you can opt for 60 or 90 day payment terms instead.

(Amazon Business American Express cardholders get 60-day terms, Amazon Business Prime American Express cardholders with an applicable Prime membership get 90-day terms.)

What is clever about this feature is that, via the American Express website, you can activate it on a ‘transaction by transaction’ basis.

You may, most of the time, be happy earning 1.5% or 2%, depending on which Card you get and whether you have an applicable Prime membership, in Amazon Rewards.

Let’s imagine, however, that you need to make a large purchase of new laptops from Amazon for your staff. You can choose to trigger the 60 or 90 day payment terms on this one major purchase and then revert to taking Amazon Rewards on your next smaller Amazon purchases.

The way it works is that these purchases sit in ‘pending’ on your card account for 60 or 90 days, before dropping onto your statement. This means that the 60 or 90 days is on top of the usual period of free credit you get when paying on a credit card.

It is an easy way of easing your cashflow with the minimum of fuss and the minimum of paperwork.

You can have up to 99 Supplementary Cards

You can order up to 99 FREE Supplementary Cards for your colleagues.

This allows you to consolidate more of your business expenses and manage your spending easily.

(Whilst this article isn’t primarily about the Card rewards, it is worth mentioning that you would earn rewards for yourself based on the spending made by colleagues using your Supplementary Cards.)

Amex has quality reporting

Credit cards are the core business of American Express, and they do a good job of offering the right sort of account management tools.

As well as a popular App for monitoring spending on the go, you will benefit from a higher level of transaction reporting than is offered by most card companies. Airline transactions, for example, are broken down by passenger name.

Global support

You benefit from a global network of customer support centres, able to ship replacement Cards to wherever you are if required.

If you go for the Amazon Business Prime Amex Card, you get a funky metal card

The current limited offer* of ‘no fee for the first year’ and a £25 Amazon gift card is only available on the Amazon Business American Express card.

However, if you go for the premium Amazon Business Prime American Express card, you can get a funky metal card.

It is also the first UK American Express Card to be issued in a vertical format, as you can see from the image above. You can find out more about the Amazon Business Prime American Express on the website here.

Conclusion

The ability to give your business 60 or 90 day payment terms on your Amazon purchases sets the Amazon Business American Express Cards apart.

Remember that, for a limited period*, the standard Amazon Business American Express Card has no annual fee for the first year. You still receive the £25 Amazon Gift Card upon approval, and there is no minimum spend target.

You will qualify for the £25 Amazon Gift Card irrespective of what other American Express cards you hold.

You can find out more about, and apply for, the Amazon Business American Express Cards here.

* Limited time offer. Valid from 1 April 2021 for a minimum period of 2 months and a maximum period of 6 months.  Offer may be withdrawn or modified at any time after 1 June 2021.

Terms and conditions apply. Subject to approval, 18+. American Express Services Europe Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Amazon acts as a credit broker, not a lender. American Express and all related logos are trademarks of American Express Company and its affiliates.