Free 50,000 Membership Rewards Points Worth $500+: New Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN

Ready for another one? American Express just announced a limited-time 50,000 Membership Rewards point bonus for their New Business Gold Rewards Card from OPEN, which is one of their upscale-oriented charge cards for small businesses where you must pay off the balance each month but you get the famous AmEx perks like purchase price protection, extended product return protection, and AmEx extended warranty. Here are the highlights:

Earn 50,000 Membership Rewards (MR) bonus points after application and spending $10,000 in your first five months of Card membership. That is enough points to convert to enough frequent flier miles (50,000) for two airline tickets or $500 in gift cards. Actually, after spending $10,000 and earning a point per dollar, you’ll earn a total of 60,000 MR points for another possible $100 in gift cards to retailers like Gap, Home Depot, Zappos, Olive Garden, etc. As a backup, you can use 50k points to buy $350 of anything from Amazon.com. Existing American Express OPEN Gold Card members are not eligible for this offer.The annual fee is $0 for the first year of card membership, and $175 thereafter. This way you can try out the card for a year for free, get the 50k points, and then decide later if you wish to keep it.Triple points on airfare. What makes this card “new” is that you can now earn triple points on airfare as well as double points on advertising, shipping, and gas purchases on the first $100,000 of eligible purchases in each category each calendar year. Everything else earns 1 point per dollar spent. Limited time offer, they even explicitly reserve the right to end it early in their fine print. Otherwise, ends 11/28/2011.

Many people aren’t aware of the fact that they can apply for business credit cards, even if they are not a corporation or LLC. Why? Because any individual can be a business as well. The business type is called a sole proprietorship. Perhaps you sell items on eBay, Craiglist, or Etsy. Maybe you do some freelancing and/or consulting. If you earned more than $600 from a single client, you probably got a 1099-MISC tax form and filled out a Schedule C. Boom! You’re a sole proprietorship. This is the simplest business entity, but it is fully legit and recognized by the IRS. On a business credit card application, you should use your own legal name as the business name, and your Social Security Number as the Tax ID.

Specifically, this card will require you to personally guarantee that you’ll pay them back what you charge on the card, which means they’ll check your personal credit score like any other consumer card. However, the card itself is a business card so it won’t show up on your personal credit report, so it won’t change things like your credit limits, average account age, or credit utilization ratio.

I acknowledge that the spending requirement amounts to $2,000 per month, which can be tough. Here are some tips readers have suggested. You can try to buy AmEx gift cards to help spread out the purchases over time, buy gas or grocery or Costco gift cards, prepay utility bills or insurance premiums, use the personal version of Amazon Webpay to send money to your spouse, and I’ve even bought some Forever postage stamps to put me over the top.

Another offer out there is the American Express Platinum card affiliated with Mercedes-Benz, which offers 50,000 MR points with $1,000 minimum spending but in conjunction with a hefty $475 annual fee which basically cancels each other out. However, you do get airline lounge access for a year and $200 in airline credit towards baggage fees and such.

As usual, compare this card with other current $500+ credit card bonuses that you can also apply for.

Find more in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 8/23/11, 5:01am | Trackback

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