The Platinum Card® from American Express has long been one of the most premier travel rewards cards available. It offers a tremendous amount of valuable benefits include fee credits, airport business lounge access and elite status with hotels. The Business Platinum Card® from American Express offers many of the same benefits, but it also has one key feature that makes it a great choice for award travelers. With the Business Platinum card, you’ll earn a 35% rebate on your points redeemed towards some airline tickets. *Please note, this offer has expired. Click to see current offer details.
Why This Is Such a Great Deal
Normally, you can use the “pay with points” option to erase the charges of many travel purchases, including airfare. However, I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s because American Express will normally just give you one penny in value per point redeemed. This isn’t such a great a rate of return, and you’re almost always better off transferring those points to airline miles and redeeming those miles for frequent flyer awards. When you are able to redeem your miles for expensive seats in business or first class, or last minute reservations, you can do much better than one cent per point.
But when you have the Business Platinum card, you can receive the 35% rebated on your points redeemed when you pay with points, which makes your points more valuable than it appears. A 35% rebate means that you’re actually receiving 1.54 cents in value per point redeemed. For example, if you purchase an airline ticket for $1,000, then you can redeem 100,000 points from your Business Platinum card and receive a rebate of 35,000 points. So your net cost is 65,000 points. And if you divide $1,000 by 65,000, you’ll see that you get 1.54 cents in value per point redeemed, 54% more than normal.
And since you’re buying your airline ticket with points, you’ll earn miles from your trip and credit towards airline elite status while enjoying all the benefits of any elite status you already hold. Normally, most of these benefits won’t apply to travel booked with frequent flyer miles.
When You Can Use This Benefit
Unfortunately, you won’t receive the 35% points rebate on all airline purchases, as there are some restrictions. First, you can receive the rebate on all tickets purchased from your designated carrier. This is a list of airlines that you can choose from at the beginning of each year. Once you designate an airline, you’ll also receive up to $200 in statement credits from fees you pay for with your card such as luggage fees, seat selection fees and in-flight food and beverage costs.
In addition, you receive your 35% points rebate from any ticket you purchase in business or first class ticket from any airline using American Express travel. And to make this offer even better, American Express offers its International Airline Program which can offer substantial discounts on business and first class ticket from select airlines.
The American Express Business Platinum card comes with an annual statement credit of up to $200 towards airline fees, and up to $200 in annual statement credit towards Dell purchases. It also features airport business lounge access and elite status Marriott and Hilton hotels.
Bottom Line
The American Express Business Platinum card is a great card by itself. But if you know how to leverage its 35% points rebate, then you’ll be able to stretch your rewards even further than you might have thought.
