How to earn an easy 100,000+ points for your business

If you run your own business, the bills and expenses you’re already paying every day could be your ticket to free flights and upgrades to business class, just by paying for those expenses using a points-earning credit card or charge card.

Better yet, you can get your points balance off to a positive start by taking advantage of one of American Express’ generous sign-up deals, which places 100,000 bonus frequent flyer points in your account (or even more!) by doing just that.

American Express cards are widely accepted for business expenses – you can use them to book flights, hotel stays and hire cars; dine at many restaurants; order goods from suppliers; pay the rent on your business premises (via Rental Rewards), and more.

Even better, if a business doesn’t accept AMEX, you can still pay them using your American Express card through services like PayPal, RewardPay and B2BPay, to maximise your cashflow and your frequent flyer points, without necessarily needing a second, ‘backup’ card.

Here are the biggest business offers on the table right now, with huge piles of bonus points at the beginning and good ongoing frequent flyer earning rates as you continue to spend.

AMEX Qantas Business Rewards Card: 100,000 bonus Qantas Points

Apply for the American Express Qantas Business Rewards Card by July 2 2018 and you could earn an easy 100,000 bonus Qantas Points when you spend $3,000 on purchases within two months of your card approval date, and pay an annual fee of $450.

You’ll also earn 1.25 Qantas Points per $1 spent on everyday purchases, with a boosted earning rate of two Qantas Points per $1 spent on Qantas flight bookings and Qantas Club airport lounge memberships, and an earn rate of one point per $2 spent on utilities, insurance and government payments.

There’s no limit to the number of points you can earn, and these will be credited monthly to your company’s Qantas Business Rewards account. From there, the business owner determines who those points are transferred to – whether that’s themselves, or an employee or client as a nice ‘thank you’ or to book a business trip.

Business owners can apply if they have a personal pre-tax income of just $24,000 per year and their business is registered for GST.

Once you have the card, there’s no extra fee to issue up to 99 additional cards under the one account, such as for your spending employees, so that the business keeps earning points in the one central account regardless of who pays each bill or expense.

American Express Platinum Business Card

Look to the AMEX Platinum Business Card for an even higher offer of 120,000 bonus frequent flyer points, for businesses that apply by July 2 2018, are approved, and spend at least $5,000 on the card within the first two months – plus an annual fee of $1,500.

Sound pricey? As with the Qantas Business Rewards Card, you can also add up to 99 additional cardholders onto the account at no extra cost, but being a higher-grade product, each cardholder is also covered under a master American Express insurance policy when travelling for business, even if the trip wasn’t paid for using the Platinum card: great if your clients usually handle your travel arrangements.

The business earns points in a central AMEX Membership Rewards Ascent Premium account – from which, points can be converted across to 10 different airlines at a 1:1 rate, including Qantas Frequent Flyer and Virgin Australia Velocity, or to two hotel chains (Hilton and SPG).

Spending on this account attracts two frequent flyer points per $1 spent at most AMEX-accepting Australian restaurants, hotels, airlines, advertising companies, couriers and on computer equipment purchases from selected suppliers such as Apple, Dell and IBM, up to 375,000 points per year.

Once reaching this threshold, you’ll continue to earn one point per dollar spent, uncapped – the same earn rate you’ll get on most other purchases year-round, except on government, insurance and utility payments which always earn one point per $2 spent.

Business owners can apply for this card with a personal pre-tax income of $75,000 when their business is registered for GST.

Not a business owner?

Just because you’re not working for yourself doesn’t mean you can’t earn points when spending your own money!

For a solid everyday earning rate of 1.5 frequent flyer points per dollar spent on most purchases, look to the American Express Qantas Ultimate Card, the AMEX Velocity Platinum Card or the AMEX Explorer Card – the latter also earning points with Velocity, plus others like KrisFlyer and Asia Miles.

In places where American Express isn’t accepted, you could also earn one Qantas Point per $1 spent up to $7,500 per month with the ANZ Frequent Flyer Black Visa – currently with no annual fee in the first year and an offer of 75,000 bonus Qantas Points for eligible new customers.

Prefer to earn Velocity points? ANZ’s comparable Rewards Black Visa has a similar earn rate of one Velocity point per $1 spent when converting points via the ANZ Rewards program, also with no annual fee in the first year and 75,000 bonus ANZ Rewards points (37,500 Velocity points) for eligible new customers.

If KrisFlyer miles are your goal, the St. George Amplify Signature Visa has Australia’s highest earning rate for KrisFlyer miles on Visa/Mastercard spend, initially delivering 0.75 KrisFlyer miles per $1 spent, boosted to 0.825 KrisFlyer miles per $1 after the bank awards you with a ‘birthday bonus’ each year.

Chris C.

Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.