AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Business Credit Card Review (Formerly AmEx SPG Business) (2020.10 Update: 100k Offer + Platinum Elite Status For One Year!)

2020.10 Update: The new offer is 100k + Marriott Platinum elite status for one year!

2019.10 Update: The offer is back to 75k now.

2019.9 Update: The 100k offer has returned! The minimum spend is $5000 within 3 months. This offer is set to expire on 10/23/19.

Application Link

Benefits

1. 100k offer: earn 100,000 Marriott points after you make $5,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. This is the best offer recently.
2. Marriott point is now the most flexible points (after the merger with SPG). We estimate that Marriott points are worth about 0.8 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 100k highest sign-up bonus is worth about 800!
3. [Limited time] Earn Marriott Platinum elite status for the year of 2021 (2021.02.01 ~ 2022.01.31)! With the Platinum elite status, you get free breakfast and other benefits.
4. Earn 6x Marriott points for each dollar of eligible purchases at participating SPG and Marriott Rewards hotels; 4x at U.S. restaurants, at U.S. gas stations, on wireless telephone services purchased directly from U.S. service providers and on U.S. purchases for shipping; 2x Marriott points for each dollar on other eligible purchases.
5. Receive a Free Night Award that you can redeem for a one-night stay at participating SPG and Marriott Rewards properties with a redemption level at or under 35,000 points (additional mandatory resort fees may apply) every year of Card Membership.
6. [New] Earn 15 elite nights each calendar year (elite nights are for status, not free nights). These elite nights are in addition to the elite nights you obtained from personal Marriott co-branded cards.
7. Receive complimentary Marriott Silver Elite Status; earn Marriott Gold Elite Status after you spend $35,000 in eligible purchases in a calendar year. Note that in the new Marriott program, the most important benefits (such as: free breakfast, lounge access, suite upgrade) comes with Marriott Platinum and higher status, therefore the status earned on this card is not quite useful.
8. With this card, you can get access to Amex Offer, which usually offers very good discounts at some stores, such as: spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.
9. Complimentary Boingo Wi-Fi on up to four devices worldwide. [2020 update: This benefit is removed]
10. No foreign transaction fee.
11. Refer a friend: You can earn 20,000 bonus Marriott points for every approved account you refer, up to 55,000 Marriott points per calendar year.

Disadvantages

1. $125 annual fee, NOT waived for the first year. ($95 before 2019.03.28)

Introduction to Marriott Points

• Marriott points are the most flexible transferable points (After the merging with SPG, Marriott obtained all its airline partners).
• You can earn Marriott points with Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold, AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant, AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Business, and the following cards that do not accept new applications but accept product change: Chase Ritz-Carlton, and AmEx Marriott Bonvoy.
• Marriott points are stored in your Marriott account, not in your credit cards, so you won’t lose your points by canceling the credit cards.
• Your Marriott points will expire if you don’t earn or spend any Marriott points in 24 months. As long as you earn make a purchase with the corresponding credit cards or stay in a hotel, or you redeem some points during the time frame, the point expiration date will be postponed accordingly.
• Marriott points can be transferred to a lot of airlines miles (you don’t have to have a Marriott related credit card to make the transfer), and the ratio is 3:1.25 (i.e. 3:1 transfer rate, plus you get 5k bonus miles for every 60k Marriott points you transfer at a time). The good options are: Alaska Airlines (AS) (Non-alliance), Japan Airlines (JL) (Oneworld), United Airlines (UA) (Star Alliance), American Airlines (AA) (Oneworld), All Nippon Airways (ANA, NH) (Star Alliance), Korean Air (KE) (SkyTeam), etc. If you use Marriott points in this way, the value is about 0.7 cents/point.
• Marriott points can also be redeemed for hotel stays obviously. Here’s the redemption chart: Marriott redemption chart. Generally speaking, you can get a better redemption value from lowest categories. If you use Marriott points in this way, the value is about 0.7 cents/point.
• In summary, we estimate that Marriott points are worth about 0.7 cents/point.

Recommended Application Time

1. You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
2. [New] Welcome offer not available to applicants who:
   1. have or have had: the Old Chase Marriott Business or Old Chase Marriott Business $45 annual fee version in the last 30 days,
   2. have acquired: Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold, or Old Chase Marriott Premier in the last 90 days,
   3. or received a new Card Member bonus offer on: Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold, or Old Chase Marriott Premier in the last 24 months.
3. AmEx doesn’t typically care about the number of hard pulls.
4. You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 6 months.
5. Only one AmEx credit card can be approved per day. This rule does not apply to charge cards, you can be approved for one credit card and multiple charge cards in the day. Multiple cards approved in the same day will only have one Hard Pull.
6. Only 2 AmEx credit cards can be approved within 90 days, but again, this rule does not apply to charge cards.
7. You can keep at most 5 AmEx credit cards, not including charge cards.

Summary

This card is really similar to the personal AmEx Marriott Bonvoy. What’s special about this card is, starting from 2020, Marriott allows you to stack the elite nights earned from personal and business Marriott co-branded cards. That’s 15+15=30 elite nights in total. Note that you can only earn up to 15 elite nights if you only have personal co-branded cards, no matter how many of them you have. Nowadays this card is the only Marriott business co-branded card that accepts new applications. Therefore, you pay the $125 annual fee and what you get is a free night certificate up to 35k plus 15 elite nights, and it’s suitable for someone who wants to earn Marriott elite status.

Related Credit Cards

The current terms basically force you to choose from either Chase or AmEx, not both.

Recommended Downgrade Options

• You can not downgrade this card to any card with no annual fee, so I suggest you close it when you don’t want to keep it any longer.

After Applying

• Click here to check AmEx application status.
• AmEx reconsideration backdoor number: 877-399-3083. The “real” backdoor number of Amex is well protected. Different from Chase, the representatives from this AmEx reconsideration backdoor number only have the right to help you submit requests.

Historical Offers Chart

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