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The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express is a solid TFM favorite thanks to its simple structure, its $0 annual fee and its useful earning rate on up to $50,000 of spending every year.
It’s one of the few cards that we consider a “must have” card for anyone playing the miles and points game so the fact that the referral bonus on this card has recently been boosted, makes this a good time for card holders to introduce this card to their friends and family.
The card in brief
Here are the key things that you need to know about the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express:
- The annual fee is $0 – (see rates & fees – terms apply)
- The cost of employee cards is $0 – (see rates & fees – terms apply)
- The current welcome bonus (open to all) allows new cardholders to earn 15,000 Membership Rewards points after they spend $3,000 in eligible purchases on their Card within the first 3 months of Card Membership (terms apply)
- The card earns 2 Membership Rewards Points/dollar on all eligible spending up to a limit of $50,000/year and 1 point/dollar thereafter (terms apply).
- The Membership Rewards points that the card earns can be transferred to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs just like the points from all other Membership Rewards cards (more details here)
- The card has access to Amex Offers just like any other card.
It’s simple, cheap to hold and very useful for spending that would otherwise not earn more than 2% back though any other card.
The boosted referral offer
At the time of writing, Amex has boosted the referral offer on this card from 10,000 to 20,000 Membership Rewards points (you can earn up to a maximum of 100,000 points/year by referring this card – terms apply).

All the people we know who have this card can see this boosted offer, so it’s either not targeted or it’s very widely targeted. I suspect that it’s the former.
What makes this offer particularly good is that you get to earn a very healthy number of Membership Rewards points for referring friends and family to a genuinely good card (we value 20,000 points at $300 based on the value we know we can get out of them with relative ease), while the person getting referred can still earn the same number of points from their welcome offer as they would if they didn’t use the referral link at all.


We’re not aware of a publicly available welcome offer on the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express that gives new cardholders the opportunity to earn more than 15,000 points, so no one loses out here.
Is a win-win situation for all.
Key terms
- You can receive 20,000 Membership Rewards points (“Referral Bonus”) for each eligible referral, up to a maximum of 100,000 Membership Rewards points per calendar year.
- An “eligible referral” is a referral where the referred individual applies for an American Express Card online through your personalized link provided by American Express and is issued a Card.
- To receive the Referral Bonus you must be the Basic Card Member of the account. No Referral Bonus will be posted to the account of the Additional Card Member, even for eligible referrals made by Additional Card Members.
- Referral rewards earned by the Additional Card Member will count towards the maximum annual limit of the Basic Card Member.
- You must submit referral(s) by 04/30/2026
Please read the full terms of the referral offer on the American Express website before you proceed with a referral.
Bottom line
One of our favorite credit cards is currently offering a boosted referral bonus of 20,000 Membership Reward points (up to a maximum of 100,000 points/year from referrals – terms apply) while continuing to offer those being referred the same welcome offer as is available publicly.
Given the nature of the card and the points on offer, this looks like a great deal for all involved so if this is a card that you already hold, now should be a good time to see if it would work in a friend’s or family member’s wallet.