American Express Gold Business Card

Here’s a gold-plated opportunity to earn a ton of rewards points just for doing business as usual. The American Express Gold Business Card will deliver ongoing Amex Ascent Membership Rewards points at a very satisfactory rate, up to 51 interest-free days per month and top-level insurance cover, all packaged in a card designed to make your business life much easier.

Earn up to 1.5 points per dollar on purchases

All your business purchases will earn valuable Amex Ascent Membership Rewards points – that’s one step up from the entry-level Gateway points.

• For payments to government bodies, you’ll earn 1.0 points per dollar
• For all other purchases you’ll earn 1.5 points per dollar

Amex cards are notable for allowing points to be earned on payments to the government. Paying your taxes becomes less painful when you earn 1.0 points for every dollar you part with. (The ATO charges a 1.45% fee for Amex payments.)

Points are uncapped and never expire, so you can use your card as much or as little as you like, secure in the knowledge that the earning rate will continue as stated and that you won’t use your valuable points as a result of inactivity.

There’s just one catch (or extra option, depending on your viewpoint). Membership of the rewards scheme is not automatic. You need to opt in, and pay an annual fee of $80 on top of the standard annual fee for the card. That $80 will be quickly recovered with just $10,667 of ‘all other’ purchases (by redeeming points for retail gift cards), but if you don’t want to bother with points you don’t need to.

Heaps of ways to redeem your points

The hardest part about redeeming Amex points is choosing between the many redemption options, although transferring them to an airline frequent flyer program probably delivers the best value.

Here are just some of the things you can do:

• Transfer your points to nine airline frequent flyer programs: The partner airlines are Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Thai Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Malaysian Airlines, but not Qantas (which requires Ascent Premium membership). The conversion rate is 2.0 Membership Rewards points = 1.0 frequent flyer mile or point (200 Membership Rewards points = 1.0 Airpoints dollars in the case of Air New Zealand).
• Transfer your points to two frequent guest programs: Marriott Bonvoy (3:2) and Hilton Honors (2:1)
• Shop online for merchandise at davidjones.com.au.
• Purchase retail gift cards: 2,000 points per $10.
• Pay with points for travel at American Express Travel Online, Hello World and Webjet, at the same rate as for retail gift cards.
• Book entertainment tickets through Ticketmaster.
• Swap points for a cashback, credited to your card account.
• Buy foreign currency from American Express.

The Amex points earn and burn combination is very competitive when compared with similar cards.

Interest-free days, even though it’s a charge card

This is not a credit card, but a charge card. You can’t treat it like a revolving line of credit, and choose to repay only a minimum amount and accrue interest on the remaining balance. There are no interest rates quoted, no balance transfer option and no cash advances because you will be expected to repay your account balance in full on the due date every month.

However, during the course of the month you will receive up to 51 days interest free on purchases, which gives you some flexibility in managing the cash flow of your business. Plan your major purchases to fall at the beginning of the statement cycle and keep your cash in the bank for 51 days until payment is due.

Avoid being late with payments because there is a steep $30 late payment fee. Prolonged payment default will attract liquidated damages charges, which can be punitive. You can sign up for SMS or email alerts to notify you when payment is due, as well as giving balance updates and payment confirmation.

Business-oriented insurance cover

This is both a gold card and a business card, so it includes both international and domestic travel insurance for business and personal travel, with additional business cover that does not come with the average personal card. The complimentary policies are:

• Annual multi-trip international travel and domestic air travel insurance for the cardholder (including supplementary cardholders) and their immediate family. It covers emergency medical expenses (overseas only), luggage, documents, delayed and missed flights, unavoidable trip cancellation, personal liability, and more.
• Transport accident insurance, providing cash compensation for loss of life or limb while travelling on public transport.
• Card account balance waiver cancels the amount owing on the card (up to a maximum of $20,000) in the event of a successful transport accident claim.
• Business trip completion cover reimburses the expenses of an alternative employee’s trip if serious illness or death prevents the cardholder from completing a business trip.

Just pay all your trip fares with the card to activate the policies. This type of comprehensive business cover would probably cost well in excess of $1,500 per year on the retail insurance market.

Making your business life easier

The business-tailored aspects of this card are not confined to insurance cover designed for business travellers. There’s an abundance of other features designed to smooth the path of the small business person or sole trader:

• Add up to 99 supplementary cards for trusted employees.
• Travelling cardholders can access cash from ATMs worldwide.
• Pay with smart mobile devices using Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or Google Pay.
• Pay suppliers both in Australia and overseas, even if they don’t accept American Express cards, using Amex’s AccessLine, and earn rewards points on the payments.
• Receive monthly statements itemising business expenses and providing GST details to assist in BAS and tax return preparation.
• Statements and transaction details can be downloaded to Quicken, MYOB and Excel for seamless integration with your accounting system.
• Access up to six months of historical transactions online.
• Account data consolidates primary and supplementary/employee cardholder expenses.
• No pre-set credit limit (but not limitless credit), providing greater flexibility than a fixed-limit credit card.
• Instant SMS and email alerts available.
• Online fraud protection guarantee.
• Global 48-hour emergency card replacement.
• Award-winning customer service.

What’s not so good?

There are so many positives to this card it’s easy to lose sight of a few downsides.

For a start there’s the fact that American Express cards are not universally accepted, and when they are accepted they often attract a surcharge. (However, Coles, Woolworths and major national retailers will accept Amex without a surcharge, and American Express has been actively working on improving card acceptance by bringing its fees into line with those of its competitors. And you can use AccessLine to pay suppliers who don’t accept Amex cards.)

You can’t do a balance transfer from another card or take a cash advance, or elect not to pay your account balance in full and on time.

The annual card fee of $169 is not negligible, plus there’s an $80 p.a. fee for the rewards program and each supplementary card costs a pricey $119. So the overall package, with just one card for a spouse or an employee, would cost $368 every year. Nevertheless, the points and insurance, if you can use them, will recover the fees many times over.

Similar cards worth considering

This card lies in the centre of the range of Amex business cards. Amex has the whole spectrum covered, with the more modest American Express Business Card, the American Express Business Explorer Credit Card and the sky-high American Express Platinum Business Card. There are also Amex business cards dedicated to the Qantas and Velocity frequent flyer programs if you are already locked in to either of these reward schemes.

On our Business Credit Cards page in our Features section you can also check out NAB business credit cards, plus cards from other banks, covering a whole range of options from low interest rate cards to premium rewards points or frequent flyer points cards.

But you can also use a personal credit card for business purposes, if rewards and complimentary benefits are more important to you than the card’s business features. For a similar cost, you could have the Westpac Altitude Black Credit Card, with a choice of rewards programs, a high points earning rate and lots of built-in benefits.

So why choose the American Express Gold Business Card?

If you are operating your business on a sound financial basis, the fact that this is not a credit card won’t concern you, because your bank will already cover your borrowing needs at a competitive interest rate. What really sells this card is the point that it is custom-made for business purposes and will prove its worth at tax time, and also when you need to see historical expenses so that you can set up a budget for the future. Issuing supplementary cards to employees will ensure that you can keep business costs down (or employee morale up) by earning rewards merely for going about your normal business.