Quick one tonight - if you've been weighing up The American Express Business Platinum or Business Gold Card, the elevated welcome bonuses on both end at midnight tonight (Tuesday 5 May 2026). Applications received after that revert to the standard offers, which are roughly half (Platinum) or a third (Gold) of what's currently on the table.
I won't pad this out - it's a deadline post and you've got better things to do than read 1,500 words of preamble.
What's on offer
The American Express Business Platinum Card: 120,000 Membership Rewards points after spending £12,000 in your first three months. £650 annual fee. Standard offer is 50,000 points, so this is a 70,000-point uplift purely for applying tonight rather than tomorrow.
The American Express Business Gold Card: 60,000 Membership Rewards points after spending £6,000 in your first three months. Free for the first year. Standard offer is 20,000 points, so this elevated version is tripled.
Both convert 1:1 into Avios or Virgin Points, plus 30+ other airline and hotel partners (Hilton Honors at 1:2, Marriott Bonvoy at 2:3). For most UK readers, the Avios route is the one that matters.
What 120,000 Avios actually books
The point of a welcome bonus is what it gets you on the back end. 120,000 Avios isn't unlimited, but it's enough to do something genuinely useful:
One World Traveller Plus return to New York or Boston (85,000 Avios off-peak), with around 35,000 Avios left over
One World Traveller Plus return to Tokyo or Hong Kong (100,000 Avios off-peak), with 20,000 left over
Four Club Europe returns to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin or similar (30,000 Avios each off-peak)
Two Club Europe returns to Tel Aviv (48,500 Avios each off-peak), with around 23,000 left over
If you want to plug specific routes in and see exactly what they cost, our Avios pricing tool covers every BA destination, and Award Travel Finder will show you live award seat availability before you commit any points.
One thing worth flagging: 120,000 Avios is not enough for a Club World long-haul return (London-New York is 160,000 off-peak each way, and Tokyo is 200,000). If a business class long-haul redemption is the goal, you'll either want to apply for the Platinum AND the Gold, or pair this with a partner's bonus.
The eligibility catch
Both Business cards are restricted to Directors of Limited Companies and Members of Limited Liability Partnerships. Sole traders are no longer accepted - that changed a couple of years ago and trips a lot of people up. The Business Platinum also requires £35,000 personal income; the Business Gold requires £20,000.
If you do qualify, here's the genuinely useful piece: there's no lifetime bonus restriction on either Business card. You can apply for the bonus even if you've held the card before, as long as you hit the spend target. That's the opposite of how the personal Amex cards work, and it makes the Business cards meaningfully easier to recommend.
Should you actually rush?
Honest answer: only if you're already certain on three things.
One, that you can comfortably hit the spend (£12,000 in three months for Platinum, £6,000 for Gold). If you can't, you don't get the bonus.
Two, that you actually qualify (Ltd Co or LLP, income threshold met).
Three, that you've thought about the £650 Platinum annual fee against the benefits you'd genuinely use - rather than the benefits Amex's marketing page tells you about.
This 120k/60k cycle has run more than once in the past 18 months, so it's reasonable to assume something similar will return at some point. But the standard offer is meaningfully worse, and rushed applications under deadline pressure are how people end up with cards they don't need. If you're not certain on any of the three points above, the right answer is to wait.
What I use them for
Full disclosure: I hold both. The Business Gold is genuinely hard to argue with in year one given there's no fee. The Business Platinum is a more considered call - the £650 fee is steep, and I'd urge anyone weighing it up to look at the ongoing benefits properly (the £200 Amex Travel credit, lounge access and the monthly spend bonuses) and ask whether they'd actually use them. If you're not flying enough to lean on the lounge access, the Gold is the smarter pick.
Apply before midnight
If you've decided you want one or both, application links below. Don't leave it to 11:55pm - Amex's site has a habit of creaking under deadline traffic.
If you're after the personal cards instead, the Platinum Card and Preferred Rewards Gold are running their own elevated offers until 26 May 2026, so there's no rush there. Personal Amex cards here.
Good luck if you go for it. And if you'd rather see what else is worth holding right now before committing to anything, our UK business credit card recommendations are kept up to date.
Jack