Honestly, I wouldn't believe that deal, except that I have a multi-year history with stripe as our CC processor and it has been nothing but positive and as-promised.
So, I submitted an application. It sounds like a great deal to me.
It's really easy to believe the deal when you look at your interchange rates. The Capital One that I mention above has 2.3% interchange rate, so the merchants who take it get hit much harder than other cards. Capital One, stripe, amex etc are all still making a killing on these cards, they just do it on the backs of the merchants who accept them.
Based off our business spending on our card, which isn't extreme by any measures (18 employees, bootstrapped and cash flow positive, doing fairly decent), it probably beats that stripe card even with the processing fee bump.
As a small business owner, it wasted hours of my life for no good reason.
We’ve been using two capital one cards for all of our expenses (in the hundreds of thousands per month), and have really enjoyed the benefits of 2% cash back.
The biggest issue is the credit limit. Even after 12 months of making 4-6 payments for the entire credit limit throughout the month (we max the card out every week at least), they still won’t give us the limit we need. Sometimes they even make up bogus excuses on the credit request response form Such as “account cost too high” (or something like that)
Had the same experience with the same card, asked multiple times for a credit increase ... which they denied. Then they increased it months later when I didn't ask. Go figure.
The Amazon Business card from Amex is great for Amazon spending, products and AWS included.
Is there an equivalent for Azure?
Do they require personal social security number?
Can they be ordered in bulk (ie, 5-10 at a time when onboarding folks).
Not to be rude, but the corporate card market is different than the personal card market in a number of ways.
> Am I personally liable for purchases made on the card?
> No. Only your business is liable for purchases made on the card.
In fact it wasn't even delivered until after I arrived in the US. At check-in (to the hotel, not the airport) my boss had fax'd them a picture of her Amex card and that was good enough for them. When she flew in a few days later I tried to meet her in the bar, and that's when I found out my first crazy thing about America - I wasn't allowed in the bar.
Very different times. But I'd be surprised if Amex now cares about exactly who the people are its corporate customers want cards for. Why would they? These cards aren't for you to use as personal payment cards, they're your employer's card and you're just authorised to use it for work.
It's usually based on receipts, and certain bars that are majority alcohol 21+, a restaurant that happens to serve drinks is any age. Pub type places really can vary depending on the state/county/city/township. But yeah exclusively alcohol bars will almost always be 21+.
I'm surprised this is surprising, I saw several 21 or even 25+ bars in Europe. But they were mostly aimed at turning away groups of rowdy backpackers, if you went in for a quiet pint nobody pressed if you were 22 or 20.
The "Business" ones require a personal guarantee. For some color, I've signed up for multiple Amex Business cards in the past as a "sole proprietor" even though I was really just churning the cards for the rewards. You just input your SSN for the EIN.
The Corporate Amex cards don't require a personal guarantee.
edit: After some searching, it appears AmEx offers corporate cards both with and without personal guarantees, and it's up to the company to decide which they want to do. In my case, at one of the largest consulting companies in the world, they required personal guarantees.
AFAIK the thought behind it is that not every expense on the card is for work - as a consultant, I travel every week and I put all kinds of expenses on the card (not all of which are strictly "for work" or allowed to be reimbursed by the company). This way, my company still pays the bill for whatever expenses I mark as reimbursable, but the company doesn't have to worry about being on the hook for when I use my card to buy a pair of pants.
To me, it's basically the same as having a personal CC and my company reimburses me for the expenses - except in this case, it's a lot easier for my company to pay part of the bill directly (instead of me being an intermediary) and I also don't have to worry about hitting a credit limit.
The company collects all the rewards for the spend but you take on all of the risk of repayment. If you used your personal card you'd collect the rewards.
Using personal cards and being reimbursed is a nice perk for many.
Erm, no they don't. I personally collect all of the rewards from it. I have a nice fat account of AmEx MRs (and plenty of hotel and airline points) thanks to all of my corporate card spend.
edit: I have no idea why this is being downvoted. Do you want me to show you a screenshot of my MR account as proof, or something? AmEx corporate cards absolutely give the card rewards to the employee, not the company.
See https://millionmilesecrets.com/news/you-can-earn-american-ex...
From your link
>However, if your company has blocked the American Express Membership Rewards program, you will NOT be able to enroll your corporate cards.
Also
>To earn American Express Membership Rewards points, you have to pay $90 to enroll your American Express Green Corporate card or American Express Gold Corporate card.
So only worth it for people who know they will be big spenders and who won't leave the company for a long time. For someone who travels only once a year (like me) totally not worth it. I'd rather collect the ~$30 cash back on my 2.5% cash back card.
There's also the one-off situation where I really needed a new pair of pants while traveling (my only clean pair of business-appropriate pants split down the middle) and for some reason the only card I had on me was my corporate card. Obviously extremely rare, but I've heard of similar situation (but with a belt) happening to another colleague.
I have Amex corporate and it absolutely required a personal guarantee. Social Security number and all.
I routinely order multiple employee cards with nothing more than employee names. Sometimes they use last 4 digits or DOB to allow employee to authenticate for online access - you can use any 4 digits though you want (ie, employee ID works fine). No personal guarantee. Oddly, I'd never heard of a corporate card requiring an employee guarantee though I guess Amex is one of them.
This stripe card is a corporate card in the "normal" sense for me - no personal guarantee. This makes getting them (usually) very easy, just upload a list of 20 names and the cards come. I even do things like "Office Manager" for the name on non-stripe cards - works fine.
For anyone else who stumbles across this comment: AmEx offers Corporate cards both with or without a personal guarantee, depending on what the company wants to do. And (also mentioned farther down in this thread) they also give the option to give the card rewards to each individual employee cardholder, or give all the rewards to the business, again depending on what the company chooses.
When you start a corporation with no history, any credit obtained is obtained through the founders personal credit history, with all the liability that entails.
When the corporation reaches a certain point of maturity, the corporation starts having it's own 'credit' and non-personally backed credit lines can be obtained.
I'm ignorant as to the variables used to determine 'maturity' (though processing volume and tax history are probably two, since I know you can get a corporate credit line backed by outstanding accounts receivable alone)
This is for a DE corporation and I'm a California resident.
No approved expenses report, no payment, your own problem.
For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/6164...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-09/visa-mast...
> Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. agreed to cut Canadian credit-card transaction fees in a move that could save smaller businesses C$250 million ($192 million) a year and crimp revenue for Canadian lenders.
> American Express Co. agreed separately to support “objectives of greater fairness and transparency," the government said. AmEx doesn’t operate on an interchange model for its fees. The New York-based company remains “committed to improving the fairness of the Canadian credit card ecosystem,” company spokesman David Barnes said in an email.
For the same reason, I wouldn't use Stripe Atlas (their company formation solution) or other services.
I will definitely be getting the Stripe card because the intro offers are so good. But, the airfare discounts alone at AmEx Travel are so good it will continue to be my go-to corporate card.
Edit: just realized you were referring to booking with points. In that case it gets a little more hazy, who knows what the value is really worth there. But I definitely have a negative opinion of Amex travel and will avoid them if possible, at this point I just assume they’re giving me a bad deal
I'm not super clear on the difference between business cards and corporate cards.
Just looked it up. Same flight, same time.
Google Flights: $309 AmExTravel: $386
25% off isn't so great when the competitor is already 20% lower.
So invalid as a comparison to a corporate card.
Usually company cobranded cards (ex. airlines, hotels) are tightly tied with that company's services, Uber seemed to just want to make a good credit card that people would like to use often, which is unique.
However, it's a personal card, completely different market than corporate cards, so not comparable.
Not saying it is false or denying the actual premise of the OP. Just saying it feels personally to ME, very PR like and included for those reasons alone as a top comment here on HN.