American Express Business Gold Card review: No fuss with high earning potential

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Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information and offers.

The American Express® Business Gold Card is an excellent choice for business owners looking to maximize their earnings from a single card, with 4-point-per-dollar bonus categories that automatically reflect your highest spending areas each month (capped at $150,000 in combined purchases each year). However, the biggest downside is a relatively high annual fee — with no statement credits to offset it. Card rating*: ⭐⭐⭐½

*Card rating is based on the opinion of TPG’s editors and is not influenced by the card issuer.

Over the past few years, American Express has heavily revamped its card portfolio by adding perks across its premium cards. While the exact changes vary by card, the theme is pretty clear: higher annual fees but also more perks.

The American Express® Business Gold Card certainly meets those criteria, with a $295 annual fee (see rates and fees) and powerful business-friendly bonus categories. There’s great value in the Amex Business Gold Card, but Amex is also clearly targeting a narrower segment of the market with this product.

Let’s have a look at the card’s benefits and drawbacks in this Amex Business Gold review.

New applicants for the Amex Business Gold can earn 70,000 bonus points after they spend $10,000 on eligible purchases in the first three months of cardmembership. TPG values Membership Rewards points at 2 cents each, making this bonus worth a solid $1,400.

It’s also worth noting that if you’ve ever received a welcome offer for this card or the old Amex Business Gold Rewards Card (what this product used to be called), you won’t be eligible for this offer. However, you can downgrade to this card from any of Amex’s business cards, such as The Business Platinum Card® from American Express.

Related: The best time to apply for these Amex cards based on offer history

Earning points on the Amex Business Gold

One of the unique features of the Amex Business Gold Card is that your bonus categories can shift monthly to match your spending patterns. You’ll automatically earn 4 points per dollar in your top two spending categories each month, meaning you don’t have to pick a category and commit to it.

If your spending habits fluctuate month to month, Amex will ensure you get the most bonus points possible. The eligible categories are:

Your 4-point-per-dollar rate, which equates to an 8% return based on TPG’s valuation of Membership Rewards points at 2 cents each, is capped at $150,000 a calendar year across all bonus categories. The card earns 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases — i.e., everything not in your top two monthly select spending categories.

If you max out the $150,000 in spending a year, you’ll walk away with 600,000 Membership Rewards points, which TPG values at $12,000. This massive earning potential might be enough to encourage businesses to opt for this card even though it lacks the statement credits that customers tend to expect these days.

Related: Maximize your earning with the Amex Business Gold

Redeeming points on the Amex Business Gold

This card earns full-fledged Membership Rewards points, which can be transferred to any of Amex’s 20 airline and hotel partners. With all these options to pick from, you’ll be able to find a transfer partner in any of the three major airline alliances and for many non-alliance airlines as well.

The Amex Business Gold Card offers a Pay with Points redemption bonus when you book your travel through Amex Travel. You’ll earn a 25% rebate when paying with points through your Business Gold Card (up to 250,000 points per calendar year).

You need the full amount of points in your account at the time of booking, but this option will let you lock in a minimum redemption value of 1.33 cents per point. As a bonus, you’ll earn miles and elite credit on flights booked this way, as Amex books them as revenue tickets. This bonus is valid on business- and first-class tickets with any airline or all cabin classes (including economy) with the airline of your choice.

Related: The best ways to use Amex Membership Rewards points

The Amex Business Gold also offers several great tools to help you manage your business expenses. You can add up to 99 employee cards at no additional cost (see rates and fees) and earn points on their purchases. You can also easily designate an employee as an account manager, allowing someone other than the primary account holder to review statements, add new employees and make payments.

Amex also offers a receipt-match feature, which lets you upload receipts from your desktop or mobile, tag and annotate transactions and even sync this data with QuickBooks.

Out of the entire middle-to-upper tier of Amex card offerings, the Amex Business Gold is the only one with a high annual fee and no statement credits. You’ll have to ensure you can get more than $295 in value from the bonus categories and benefits alone.

Related: Is the Amex Business Gold worth the annual fee? 

Which cards compete with the Amex Business Gold?

If you want more statement credits or have difficulty justifying the Amex Business Gold’s annual fee, you may get more value from one of these cards:

For additional options, see our list of best business and best Amex credit cards.

Related: Amex Business Gold vs. Amex Business Platinum

Bottom line

The Amex Business Gold is not for everyone, but this could be a great option for larger companies looking for a no-hassle, one-card strategy that still earns travel rewards.

Much of the mental calculus around this card boils down to how much you can spend on the 4-point-per-dollar bonus categories and whether you can spend enough to recoup your $295 annual fee (see rates and fees). But if you can, you can get some excellent value from the Amex Business Gold.

Official application link: Amex Business Gold with a 70,000-point welcome offer.

For rates and fees of the Amex Business Gold, please click here. For rates and fees of the Amex Business Platinum, please click here. For rates and fees of the Amex Blue Business Plus, please click here.

Additional reporting by Emilly Thompson, Ryan Wilcox, Stella Shon and Benji Stawski.