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I’ve recently been told by Amex that I should not be using my personal charge card for business spending. This is despite having been a member for 25 years and have always used the card primarily for business costs (10’s of 1,000’s per month).
In the past, the card has definitely been promoted as the perfect way to pay business costs – so what’s with the sudden turnaround?
Simply using a corporate card instead isn’t a practical solution as I have 8-9 active businesses and CBA to open an account for each of them individually. I explained this to a member of staff at Amex and she fully understood and said that would be ok, yet now, I’m being contacted about the same subject again from a different member of staff.
Prepare to be guillotined in short order if you don’t stop putting business spend on a personal Amex. Regardless of previous tolerance levels or implied approval it’s a big no no to them now. There’s also a difference between paying personal expenses like travel & accommodation which you will reclaim from company & directly paying for inventory, consumables, rent or advertising.
Admittedly as it’s a charge card then the Section 75 cover isn’t an issue & less of a difference between interchange fees but it could cause issues over liability if you defaulted.
They receive bigger fees on business cards than personal cards. In some ways you were lucky that they gave you a heads up, instances on this forum where Amex just closes your account/s without forewarning.
To be very specific about what @Thegasman has just said, if it’s something you’d normally fill out an expenses claim for as an employee and your company/the (ideally incorporated) business (even if you own it and are a Director as well as an employee) would reimburse to you based on that claim, just like every other professional employee up and down the land, then I think it is your personal expense.
Anything else and Amex may be right.
The T&Cs specifically state “your card is for personal use and you shouldn’t use it for business purposes.”
It’s effectively insurance fraud – you are taking Section 75 coverage for purchases which should not be covered under it because they are B2B. (Although if you have the old charge card you don’t have S75 anyway.)
You are also depriving Amex of the substantially higher fees it charges on Business cards.
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