American Express Business Extra Corporate Card Review

The Business Extra Corporate Card is meant primarily for large businesses whose employees travel frequently with American Airlines. By offering a purchasing card to your employees, your business can ensure that your traveling employees have access to the spending power needed to get business done. In addition to access to spending power, the Business Extra Corporate Card can provide generous rewards to your business for employee travel on American Airlines, both through a cash rebate and through the American Airlines Business Extra program.

Business Extra is American Airlines’ program for businesses seeking additional rewards from their employees’ business travel spending. Business Extra points are earned on employee travel in addition to the AAdvantage miles earned if an employee is enrolled in American Airlines’ frequent flyer program. Business Extra points can be redeemed for a number of travel rewards, including flights, upgrades, lounge access or frequent flyer status.

In addition to the cash and points benefits, the Business Extra Corporate card integrates with Concur for easier management and oversight of employee travel expenses. For employees submitting receipts, the integration with ExpenseIt Pro can provide time savings when filing expense reports. The card also offers an optional baggage insurance plan.

• Earn up to a 6% cash rebate for your employees’ travel on American Airlines and its partners
• Earn rewards in the American Airlines Business Extra program for employee travel
• $50 on an American Airlines flight for each $5,000 in eligible purchases by an individual card member
• 2.5% of each transaction after conversion to U.S. dollars foreign transaction fee
• Annual fee: $75 per cardmember

Earning Rewards

The Business Extra Corporate card earns three distinct types of rewards: Discounts on American Airlines flights for employees, a cash rebate on American Airlines purchases and points in American Airlines’ Business Extra program.

Flight discounts for employees: Cardmembers earn a $50 discount toward flights on American Airlines for every $5,000 of eligible purchases when they use an American Express Business Extra corporate card, up to a maximum of $1,000 flight discounts per cardmember per calendar year. This is effectively a 1% rebate on the first $100,000 of spending. Flight discounts expire 365 days after they are issued.

Cash rebate on American Airlines purchases: If your company does not have a negotiated discount with American Airlines, you can receive a 4% rebate on the first $1.5M of flown American Airlines airfare purchases each year. In addition, American Express offers up to a 2% additional rebate for companies that purchase over 75% of their ticketed travel on American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia.

If your company receives a negotiated discount on American Airlines purchases, you will receive a 1% rebate on the first $1,500,0000 travel flown on American Airlines.

Business Extra points: Your company will receive 4 points in the American Airlines Business Extra program for every $20 spent on all eligible American Airlines flights and 1 point for every $20 spent on all other eligible purchases.

Redeeming Rewards

Employee flight discounts: To receive flight discounts, employees must register their card and email address online at American Express’s website. Discount certificates are issued automatically to employees at the end of the quarter in which they are earned. Flight discounts can be redeemed online at AA.com or through the American Airlines reservations phone line.

American Airlines purchase cash rebates: To receive a cash rebate for eligible American Airlines flights, your company must complete and submit a “Quarterly Rebate Fulfillment Form.” Rebates are issued via check, 8 to 12 weeks following the end of the quarter in which flights are flown. To receive the additional 2% based on the percentage of flights flown on American Airlines and preferred partners, your company must register for the program.

Business Extra points: Business Extra points can be redeemed for a number of awards on businessextra.com. Awards include flights, upgrades, AAdvantage Gold Status, or Admirals Club passes and membership. Some examples of points redemption options are below:

• Main cabin round-trip PlanAhead award within North America—2,000 points
• Business class round-trip PlanAhead award between North America and Europe—7,200 points
• International one-way upgrade on discounted fare—3,100 points
• Admirals Club Day Pass—300 points
• Admirals Club Membership—3,300 points

Rewards Potential

The rewards that your business can earn through the Business Extra Corporate Card can vary greatly—based on the number of employees you have, the amount of spending put on the cards, whether or not your company has a negotiated agreement with American Airlines and the amount of travel that your employees do with American Airlines. For the purposes of putting some values to the rewards your company could earn, we’ll make the following assumptions:

• Your company does not have a negotiated discount agreement with American Airlines
• You have 40 employees who travel and carry this card
• Average annual air travel spending of $10,000 per employee
• Average annual non-travel spending of $20,000 per employee
• All air travel spending is with American Airlines

Rewards for your business:
Assuming that all of your travel is purchased through American Airlines and more than 75% of the revenue is flown on American Airlines, British Airways or Iberia, you will earn a total of 6% of your total spending as a rebate on American Airlines. This comes to $24,000

Additionally, you will earn points in American Airlines Business Extra program for all spending. Based on our assumed spending, this comes to 80,000 points for travel with American Airlines and 20,000 points for spending elsewhere, for a total of 100,000 Business Extra points. The exact monetary value you can expect to receive from these points varies based on how they are used but assuming you redeem all of your points for domestic advanced-purchase coach travel, you can earn 50 domestic round trip tickets. If we ballpark those tickets at $250 each, you can value this at $12,500.

Rewards for your employees: The reward calculation for employees is relatively simple. Because the card offers a $50 discount per $5,000 in spending, each employee will receive a total of $300 in discounts with American Airlines.

Total rewards per cardholder: Ultimately, with a total of $24,000 in rebates, Business extra points worth $12,500 and a $300 American Airlines airfare discount per employee, your total annual benefits from this card program comes to $48,500, or $1,213 per traveling employee.

• 24/7 Global Assistance Hotline: Provides answers, advice and referrals to third party services while traveling more than 100 miles from home.
• Baggage Insurance Plan (optional): Provides coverage for up to $1,250 for carry-on baggage and up to $500 for checked baggage in the event baggage is lost, stolen or damaged.
• ExpenseIt Pro from Concur: Easily capture employee receipts directly to your company’s Concur instance.
• TripCase App Access: A mobile app that offers access to alerts about flight delays, reminders about airport lounges and consolidates travel itineraries.

See cardholder agreement for rates and fees.

The rewards earned from the Business Extra Corporate Card should not be the only factor you consider when evaluating a corporate card program. Many banks offer corporate cards with benefits that may be more useful to you and your employees. Further, integration with the expense and accounting systems your business uses could turn out to be the most important benefit of your corporate card program. Alternatively, allowing your employees to use their personal cards for business expenses has a number of benefits.

Especially if your business has a negotiated pricing agreement with American Airlines or you have employees who travel with multiple airlines, the total value you will receive from the Business Extra Corporate Card is greatly reduced. Here are a few other options to consider.

American Express® / Business Extra® Corporate Card* vs. Other Corporate Cards

Many larger banks offer corporate card programs that offer some amount of points, rebates, or cash back for your business. For example, the American Express Corporate Green Card* carries an annual fee of $75 and offers a 1% cash rebate on all eligible purchases. As another example, the J.P. Morgan Chase corporate cards earn 1 point per dollar on employee spending.

In addition to rewards, other corporate card programs may offer benefits like travel insurance or better integration with your corporate travel management system. These benefits might outweigh the additional rewards you could get from the Business Extra Corporate Card.

For large corporations, the advantages to corporate card programs are that they offer centralized management and billing and are designed to scale. Also corporate card programs can assign liability to a corporation, without the need for a business owner to directly underwrite the credit obligation, though some corporate card programs offer the ability to make individual employees liable for their own charges.

For smaller businesses that do not have the scale needs of a large corporate card program, one of the many small business cards available might be a more appropriate product.

American Express® / Business Extra® Corporate Card* vs. Brex Card*

Designed for well-funded startups, the no-annual-fee Brex Card* requires no personal guarantee and offers dynamic credit limits that move in tandem with your company’s cash flow. Rich rewards for those who are Brex-exclusive plus big discounts on certain products and services and instant virtual card access have value for a specific type of business owner.

Approval for the Brex card is based on the company’s cash flow and funding. Smaller companies who don’t yet have strong financial backing may not be approved for the card.

American Express® / Business Extra® Corporate Card*vs. American Express® Business Gold Card

If you are managing a smaller business, the American Express® Business Gold Card (Terms apply, see rates & fees) can maximize the rewards you earn on your employees’ spending on travel and in other business-relevant categories.

The card offers generous earnings of 4 Membership Rewards® points per dollar on the 2 select categories where a business spends the most each month (up to $150,000 combined purchases per calendar year), 3 points per dollar on flights and prepaid hotels booked on Amex Travel and 1 point per dollar is earned for other purchases.

American Express charges a $375 annual fee for the card. The card offers account management tools, including vendor pay and the ability to assign an account manager.

As one would expect from a premium American Express card, this card comes with a suite of travel benefits and promotions, including baggage insurance¹, trip delay insurance², secondary car rental loss/damage insurance³ and no foreign transaction fee.

The American Express Business Gold Card currently offers a welcome bonus: 70,000 Membership Rewards® points after spending $10,000 on eligible purchases within the first 3 months of opening an account.

If you are considering a corporate credit card program for a business with a large number of traveling employees who travel primarily with American Airlines and you do not have a negotiated pricing agreement with American Airlines, the Business Extra Corporate Card program will provide incredible rewards value while integrating with Concur.

If your company has a negotiated discount with American Airlines, the Business Extra Corporate Card offers substantially less value, as it will only offer a maximum 1% rebate on your American Airlines flights. In this case, you might be better off with another corporate card program, a small business card that earns cash back rewards, or allowing your employees to use their personal credit cards for business purchases.

To view rates and fees for American Express® Business Gold Card please visit this page.
¹Eligibility and Benefit level varies by Card. Terms, Conditions and Limitations Apply. Please visit americanexpress.com/benefitsguide for more details. Underwritten by AMEX Assurance Company.
²Eligibility and Benefit level varies by Card. Terms, Conditions and Limitations Apply. Please visit americanexpress.com/benefitsguide for more details. Underwritten by New Hampshire Insurance Company, an AIG Company.
³Eligibility and Benefit level varies by Card. Terms, Conditions and Limitations Apply. Please visit americanexpress.com/benefitsguide for more details. Underwritten by AMEX Assurance Company. Car Rental Loss or Damage Coverage is offered through American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.