American Express Employee Offers

Before we start, don’t forget that the death of PayPal Key is upon us. Hopefully PayPal forgot to schedule the shutdown you’ve still got a few more hours, and if we’re really lucky you’ve got until tomorrow morning too. Finish strong!

With that out of the way, there are currently two variants of American Express employee card offers floating around, and many of them have morphed over the last several weeks so it’s time to update the current state of the union.

First, the more lucrative version is a bonus for adding up to 99 employee cards. We’ve seen this one recently on:

• Business Platinum (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $4,000 in spend, six months)
• Business Gold (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $4,000 in spend, six months)
• Business Delta Reserve (5,000 SkyMiles per card, $1,000 in spend, two months)
• Business Delta Platinum (5,000 SkyMiles per card, $1,000 in spend, two months)

The less lucrative version involves a bonus for adding up to 5 employee cards, and we’ve seen it on:

• Blue Business Plus (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)
• Bonvoy Business Card ($200 statement credit per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)
• Hilton Business Card ($200 statement credit per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)

The 5 employee card version can be repeated after a few days and the phone representatives seem to believe the bonus will apply again on the new batch, though the jury is still out as to whether that’s actually true. If you want to roll the dice, I’d get another 5 every day until you hit the limit on the assumption that the representatives know what they’re talking about.

And finally, a few final notes about these deals:

• The 99 employee card variant seems to be a shotgun, all-at-once version. If you add 60 employees one day and call back later to add another 39, the deal will almost certainly be gone and you’ll be stuck with the first 60
• We’ve seen deals on cards that were just opened and on cards that have been around for years
• The offer seems to appear within a few weeks of opening a new card
• Almost everyone is targeted. If you’re not, the answer is probably more spend
• To check to see if you’re targeted for an offer, call the number on the back of your card, speak to a representative, and say “Are there any offers for adding employee cards to this account?”

Thanks to Boxy, nutella, DC Domer, SideshowBob233, Jim, and an anonymous contributor for datapoints on this offer. Now, let’s pour one out for our dying (dead) compadre, PPK.

(Update: Corrected the name of the Blue Business Plus card, thanks to Justmeha)

Celebrating the life of PPK a little too much.