American Express has just rolled out a phenomenal new offer that can save you money when making purchases at small businesses over the coming weeks. Small businesses could certainly use some help right now, so I love the concept of this.
In this post:
Save with Amex Shop Small promo
With this newly rolled out Amex Shop Small promotion:
- Save $5 when you make a $10+ purchase
- Use this promotion up to 10 times, for a total of $50 in savings
- Enroll by July 26, 2020, through the Amex Offers tab in your online Amex profile
- Make purchases through September 20, 2020
- Purchases at US business locations on the Amex Shop Small map or online directory qualify
- Each cardmember is limited to enrolling one card for this offer, so think carefully about which card you want to enroll (ideally one offering bonus points in the category you plan on spending in)
How do you access this offer?
This promotion is being offered through the Amex Offers program. For those of you not familiar with that, it’s a program available through most Amex cards, where different cards are eligible for different savings and bonus offers. In many cases, the offers can be huge, and more than offset the annual fee on a card.
In this case it seems like at least all personal credit and charge cards are eligible for the offer. To view Amex Offers, go to the bottom of the account summary page of any American Express card, where you’ll see all the offers you’re eligible for. This should appear as the first offer.
Bottom line
It’s fantastic to see Amex offering $5 back on each $10+ small business purchase, up to 10 times. Small businesses need support right now, and this is a great initiative to encourage that.
Back in the day Amex would have “Small Business Saturday,” where cardmembers could get statement credits for small business purchases once a year (on the Saturday after Thanksgiving). While Amex has continued the marketing around this, in the past few years they haven’t offered cardmembers any sort of statement credits.
Where will you spend money to earn your Amex small business statement credits?
So does an authorized user count against the 10x limit? So I am the owner of the account and I add this to my account. Authorized user adds this to their account and they have their own separate 10x limit or we both share the 10x limit?
This is a great offer. One thing is unclear in the guidelines. For the 10x limit---must it be ten different small businesses (one time per business)? Or can one get the credit by going a couple of times to the same business as well.
Does this work if I spend at a local business through GrubHub or Seamless?
25 locations is supposed to be the Amex limit to be eligible. If you see something that may be bigger be sure it has the SmallBusiness logo beside it. They are listing some without the identifying logo for some reason (maybe they're paying Amex?), and you will likely not get any credit on those.
@Audrey, he has to log into his own American Express account and select a card to add the offer. The $5 off for $10 purchase of small businesses offer showed up on my own cards as well as my Aspire, which I am only an authored user.
How in the heck do you add it to the authorized user's card? His cards don't show up on my account and vice versa. His name shows up but there is nothing to click on to bring it up.
You only get to enroll one card per member, but it can be almost any card.
I received an email from Amex inviting me to add this to my Marriott card but the link took me to my Platinum instead. An hour on the phone and Amex still can't figure out what's wrong but the takeaway is that a lot more cards may be eligible for the offer than are showing it on your summary page. The terms of the offer seem to imply that most Amex cards should be.
"Only...
I received an email from Amex inviting me to add this to my Marriott card but the link took me to my Platinum instead. An hour on the phone and Amex still can't figure out what's wrong but the takeaway is that a lot more cards may be eligible for the offer than are showing it on your summary page. The terms of the offer seem to imply that most Amex cards should be.
"Only U.S.-issued American Express Consumer and Business Cards and registered American Express Serve® and Bluebird cards are eligible."
@Craig my thoughts exactly! My husband and I added it to his Aspire and my authorized user on his Aspire, which I was ready to get rid because we always use his card when we stay at Hilton. We can split the bill and get all of the perks you listed as we still have yet to spend our resort (restaurant credit). Each person get the $5 credit, since the authorized account numbers are different...
@Craig my thoughts exactly! My husband and I added it to his Aspire and my authorized user on his Aspire, which I was ready to get rid because we always use his card when we stay at Hilton. We can split the bill and get all of the perks you listed as we still have yet to spend our resort (restaurant credit). Each person get the $5 credit, since the authorized account numbers are different when it comes to Amex cards, plus the accumulated points. This definitely beats my Chase Sapphire Reserve.
Anyone know how I can add my small business to the map?
DO you have to click "shop small map"? When I search "online businesses," lowes pops up. . . would love to use there, but suspect that doesn't actually qualify?
Liquor stores are a great use of this. Basically any store with one or two locations is a small business.
AmEx Canada has the same promo. I have it on both my Gold and Bonvoy cards.
I registered my Hilton Aspire.
Through August 30, restaurant purchases are being applied against my $250 annual resort credit.
This sounds too good to be true, but there are tons of restaurants on the small business map for my area, so if I spend $10 at one of them, I'm going to get:
- the $10 purchase credited back vs my annual resort credit;
- the $5 small business rebate/credit; and
I registered my Hilton Aspire.
Through August 30, restaurant purchases are being applied against my $250 annual resort credit.
This sounds too good to be true, but there are tons of restaurants on the small business map for my area, so if I spend $10 at one of them, I'm going to get:
- the $10 purchase credited back vs my annual resort credit;
- the $5 small business rebate/credit; and
- 70 Hilton Honors points (7X for spend at restaurants)
It certainly seems like I'm coming out $5 ahead AND getting points for it.
I guess the issue is the likelihood of only spending exactly $10.
Along those lines, any idea of gift card purchases from the merchants will trigger the credit?
If so, there's a local ice cream shop by me that may be selling a lot of $10 gift cards soon! LOL
Just checked out the map - 95% of the small businesses in my area are liquor stores. There has to be more variety than that!
@Steve, it is working now, #operatorerror maybe, or just a glitch...Thank you...
I'm seeing tons of places using the map but getting weird results using the directory. Try Portland, OR and see if it works for you just as a test.
Totally down with this offer, but is anyone else having trouble using the map/search feature...??? No matter where I search, the results always come back -0-...