Never shy about putting out exciting promotions, American Express Canada has just brought back one of its best. Until October 31, 2023, you’ll earn double points for referring a friend!
Let’s take a look at how the offer works, how you can benefit, and why you should act soon.
Double Refer-a-Friend Points Until October 31
Until October 31, 2023, you can earn double the standard referral bonus for each approved referral on your Canadian-issued American Express cards.
An “approved referral” is when a family member, friend, or colleague applies and is approved for a new American Express card, using the referral link from one of your existing American Express cards.
This offer is available on all American Express cards, as long as the card does referrals in the first place, with the exception of the Business Edge Card and the Amex Green Card. Otherwise, all cards from the full spread of rewards programs are eligible, whether they earn the flexible Membership Rewards points, or points through co-branded Aeroplan or Marriott Bonvoy cards.
For the duration of this promotion, here’s what you can earn for initiating a successful referral from many of the most popular Amex cards:
- Business Platinum Card: 40,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 20,000 points)
- Business Gold Card: 30,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 15,000 points)
- Platinum Card: 20,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 10,000 points)
- Gold Card: 15,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 7,500 points)
- Cobalt Card: 10,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 5,000 points)
- Aeroplan Reserve Card: 20,000 Aeroplan points (up from 10,000 points)
- Aeroplan Business Reserve Card: 40,000 Aeroplan points (up from 20,000 points)
- Aeroplan Card: 10,000 Aeroplan points (up from 5,000 points)
- Marriott Bonvoy Business Card: 30,000 Bonvoy points (up from 15,000 points)
- Marriott Bonvoy Card: 20,000 Bonvoy points (up from 10,000 points)
This promotion only affects the points earned by the existing cardholder who generates the referral link. The approved new cardholder’s welcome bonus is unchanged; however, it’s worth noting that referral offers tend to be better than the publicly available offers.
As a result, it’s a great time to work your referral network, for an even bigger win-win than usual.
Current American Express Welcome Offers
What’s the Strategy for Double Refer-a-Friend Points?
First things first, you’ll need to be an American Express cardholder yourself to benefit from this promotion.
Whether you can make one referral or several, this promotion is really quite simple. You’ll benefit more if you can make more referrals, but you can still capitalize on this offer if your network is more limited.
This offer is quite strong for anyone using Miles & Points in multiplayer mode, where several members of the same household earn, pool, and redeem rewards together. Double rewards for the existing cardholder means double the benefit for keeping it in the family.
Plus, if you’ve been trying to convince your significant other to start applying for Amex cards, you can use the larger total available to demonstrate the value of getting in the game.
As for the recommended sequence of cards to apply for, not much has changed. The promotion is a uniform doubling across the board, and the usual best cards remain the best.
That said, if you’re limited by the number of cards you can apply for in a short span of time, I’d focus on cards with a larger refer-a-friend bonus first.
For example, let’s say your partner applies for a new Platinum Card using your Business Platinum referral before October 31, as well as a new Cobalt Card using your Business Gold referral after October 31. In this situation, you (the referer) would earn 40,000 points now (double on the Business Platinum), plus 15,000 points later (regular on the Business Gold), for a total of 55,000 points.
If you applied in the other order, however, you’d earn 30,000 points now (double on the Business Gold) plus 20,000 points later (regular on the Business Platinum), for a total of 50,000 points.
As a reminder, these bonuses are based on the card that you refer from, not the card you refer to. These are the ideal cards to use to initiate a referral, and the eligible cards to which they each refer:
- Business Platinum can refer to Business Platinum, Business Gold, and Platinum
- Business Gold can refer to any Membership Rewards card
- Aeroplan cards can refer to each other, but premium cards cannot refer to the core card
- Bonvoy cards can refer to each other
For those looking to maximize the points you can earn from this opportunity, the annual limit for referral points earned on each card remains unchanged. These limits reset every calendar year, so there won’t be a reset during this promotion.
Here are the limits on a few key cards, which are the best ones to initiate referrals from:
- Business Platinum Card: 225,000 Membership Rewards points
- Business Gold Card: 75,000 Membership Rewards points
- Aeroplan Reserve Card: 150,000 Aeroplan points
- Aeroplan Card: 75,000 Aeroplan points
- Bonvoy cards: 150,000 Bonvoy points
Normally, it’d take 12 approved referrals to maximize the annual limit for a Business Platinum Card, five for the Business Gold Card, 15 for the Aeroplan cards, or 10–15 for the Bonvoy cards. For now, those numbers are all cut in half, if you’re able to capitalize before October 31.
If you have no problem blowing through your annual referral limits, you may have to consider initiating a referral from a sub-optimal card. For instance, your Business Gold limit will be filled very quickly, after just three approved referrals with the current promotion.
In that case, if your peer group is looking to apply for Gold and Cobalt cards, you’d have to start generating those referral links from your own Gold or Cobalt cards. Even though the points per referral are lower than you’d get for initiating the process from your Business Gold Card, once your cup is full, you may as well grab an empty one and keep the points flowing.
Conclusion
American Express continues to set the bar with the best Canadian credit card offers.
Often, these bonuses are only available to new applicants, with separate promotions for existing cardholders. This time, they’ve packaged two incentives into one, where new and existing cardholders alike will benefit from a single application.
Be sure to have your family and friends apply for new Amex cards using your referral links before October 31, 2023.
