The best business credit card for shipping purchases

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Up until the beginning of 2024, the American Express® Business Gold Card had been one of the very best cards you could hold if your business spends significant amounts of money on shipping, but following a refresh that that took effect on 1 February 2024, that’s no longer the case.

In this article we take a quick look at what other cards offer the better returns when they’re used to pay for shipping purchases, and we focus on the one card that we think stands head and shoulders above them all.

The American Express® Business Gold Card refresh is bad news for shipping purchases

If your primary reason for holding the American Express® Business Gold Card was to earn up to 4 Membership Rewards points per dollar that you spend on shipping purchases (up to a maximum of $150,000 per year – terms apply), the card’s refresh was bad news for you.

As of 1 February 2024, the card’s annual fee in now $375 and as well as a host of other changes that were made to the card, shipping spending was eliminated from the list of categories that are eligible to earn up to 4 points/dollar (on up to $150,000 per year – 1 point/dollar thereafter).

If you’re someone who has been holding the American Express® Business Gold Card primarily because of the return that it has historically offered on your shipping purchases, you now need to look for another option.

The cards that offer a good return on shipping purchases

Now that the American Express® Business Gold Card has ceased to offer bonus points for spending on shipping, there are only two major credit cards that specifically offer bonus points on shipping spending. These are:

• The Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card
• The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

The Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card offers cardholders 4 Bonvoy points/dollar on all U.S. shipping purchases (terms apply), and the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card offers 3 Ultimate Rewards points/dollar on up to $150,000 of shipping spending per year (1 point/dollar thereafter).

There are, also, a few other cards that can be used to earn a reasonable return on shipping purchases, but these do not single out “shipping” as a specific bonus category. These include:

• The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express – 2 Membership Rewards points/dollar on up to $50,000 of spending per year (1 point/dollar thereafter – terms apply).
• The American Express Blue Business Cash™ Card – 2% cash back on up to $50,000 of spending per year (1% cash back thereafter – terms apply).
• The Citi® Double Cash Card – 2% cash back on all purchases (not capped)*.
• The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card – 1.5% cash back on all purchases (not capped).

*The card pays 1% cash back when an eligible purchase appears on your monthly statement and further 1% cash back upon paying, a the very least, the minimum amount due on the statement.

Our valuations

Based on the value that we know that we can get out of each currency without having to go to any major effort, this is how we value the currencies that are mentioned above:

• Amex Membership Rewards points – 1.5 cents/point
• Chase Ultimate Rewards points – 1.5 cents/point
• Marriott Bonvoy points – 0.6 cents/point

Based on the above, this is how we value (and therefore rank) the returns offered on shipping purchases by the credit cards mentioned:

• The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card – 4.5% back.
• The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express – 3% back on up to $50,000 of spending per year (1% thereafter – terms apply).
• The Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card – 2.4% back (terms apply).
• The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card – 2.25% back.
• The American Express Blue Business Cash™ Card – 2% back on up to $50,000 of spending per year (1% cash back thereafter).
• The Citi® Double Cash Card – 2% back.

Based on our valuations (your valuations may differ), the clear winner here is the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, and when you take a look at what else this card offers, you’ll see that it doesn’t just win thanks to its great return on spending.

The Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

In brief, this is what the card offers in return for a $95 annual fee:

• Additional/employee cards at $0 each
• Earnings of 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 spent in combined purchases in the following categories each anniversary year (1 point per dollar on all other transactions and on all transactions above the $150,000 yearly maximum):
  • Travel
  • Shipping purchases
  • Internet, cable, and phone services
  • Advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines
• Primary auto rental cover
• Cell Phone protection
• No foreign transaction fees
• Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption insurance
• Purchase protection
• Extended warranty protection
• Roadside dispatch
• Cardholders can transfer points to multiple airline and hotel partners in a 1:1 ratio (details)
• Cardholders get 1.25 cents/point in value when they spend their points on travel through the Chase Travel℠ portal.

The primary auto rental cover is great when we’re traveling for work, the bonus categories are perfect for our business needs, and the Ultimate Rewards points that the card earns me help us build up a healthy balance of World of Hyatt points that we usually use for hotel stays that would have otherwise drained our wallets.

In short, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card has long been a favorite card of ours, and now that the American Express® Business Gold Card has been refreshed, it can add “best card for shipping spending” to its already impressive list of benefits.