(3/28/2018 – this offer is now expired – for current offers see our top credit card offers page)
The Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express is one of the better cards out there. Its bonus is typically 25,000 Starpoints, but has gone as high as 35,000 Starpoints. I just found out that today the bonus is back up to 35,000 points until March 28th.
You can find this card along with other business cards on our list of top business credit cards.
As always, DO NOT SIGN UP FOR A CREDIT CARD JUST BECAUSE SOME GUY ON THE INTERNET SAID YOU SHOULD
Details on the Starwood bonuses
The 35,000 point bonuses on these cards is the highest that we’ve seen before. The bonuses have gone up to 35,000 points twice before – but the spending amount required has been different. Most recently, the bonus was staggered slightly but currently the signup bonus is the full 35,000 points once you spend $7000 in the first 3 months
As I said earlier, the offer is good through March 28th.
Benefits of the Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express
Besides the Starpoints themselves (probably the most lucrative points out there), this card comes with a few other nice benefits
- Access to Amex Offers – I actually chose this as one of my cards with an annual fee that I keep, because I’ve gotten more than $95 of value just from Amex Offers on my cards
- Access to Sheraton lounges
- 2 elite qualifying stays and 5 nights towards status each year
Who can get these Starwood bonuses
As a reminder, the current card application best practices limit you to one bonus per card on American Express cards. So if you’ve ever received a bonus on an American Express Starwood card, you won’t be eligible for a bonus at this point. If you’ve gotten a bonus on the personal card, you CAN still get a bonus on the business card.
As far as I know, getting a business card with a different business name / EIN will NOT get around the 1 per lifetime bonus rule
What to do with these bonuses
35,000 Starpoints if you meet the minimum spending requirements is obviously a lot
I transferred SPG points to American Airlines to get my 2 lie-flat seats to Peru for our upcoming trip. Remember, with Starwood points, you can transfer 1:1 to most airlines, AND a 5000 bonus if you transfer in multiples of 20,000 Starpoints (so 20,000 Starpoints becomes 25,000 airline miles in most programs)
[3 SPG Transfer partners you do NOT want to use]
And of course, you can use them to (gasp!) actually stay in hotels too :-). And as a reminder, due to the impending SPG -> Marriott merger, you can currently transfer Starpoints to Marriott Rewards points at a 1:3 ratio.
See 4 reasons you might want to transfer SPG points to Marriott and 4 reasons you might want to transfer Marriott points to SPG
How to meet the minimum spend bonuses
$7000 is a lot of spend to make, and depending on your spending habits, organic spend might not be enough to make it. Here are a few options that I’ve done some work on
- My experiences using Plastiq to earn “free” money paying my mortgage
- How to get started on gift card reselling
- A month of product reselling – reselling $3709.06 of products on Amazon
Is this the last hurrah for this card?
As previously mentioned, Marriott is buying Starwood and the merger should close before too terribly long. I would expect that there will be a combine loyalty program, and it probably doesn’t make sense that there will continue to be Starwood cards issued by American Express and Marriott cards issued by Chase. It’s still too early to say what the final card landscape will be, but it would not surprise me if the Starwood cards go away at some point. So if you’re wanting to get this card, you’ll want to do it while it’s at an all-time high signup bonus, and it’s possible this may be the last or one of the last time it’s up this high.
Again, you can find this card offer on a list of top business credit cards here. I may receive a commission if you’re approved for a card through this link.
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
This is the Starwood Preferred Guest Business Amex, not the personal one. You may want to change the picture of the card to be more clear. 35k is a good bonus for $7k spend in 3 months. Previous offer for SPG Business SPG was 35k ($6k spend in 3 months for 25k, $4k spend in 6 months for 10k). Already have the business card but would probably jump on the personal one if there was an offer higher than 25k.
Correct – this is the business card
7k indeed is a lot of spend. Appreciate the candor there. Using plastiq is indeed one option — yet a very expensive one. (would be as much as a whopping $175 if one relied solely on that path)
Note you also included gift card reselling as an option to meet the 7k threshold. But if say half (or any portion) of my 7k is made up of transactions from ebay, (ppdg, svm, etc.) mygiftcardplus, giftcards.com etc., will such business pass muster with Amex’s dreaded “rat” teams? Would it even matter that I do a schedule C etc. re. my gc reselling “business.” (with these “RAT” teams, isn’t it, “guilty until proven innocent”) What say your Amex handlers on this? thanks.
It’s really up to you how much risk you want to take. Personally what I’ve seen suggests that buying things on giftcards.com / MS is different than buying actual gift cards on ebay / ppdg. Again, YMMV. And I do not think that having a Schedule C will have any impact
thanks for the response. Alas, I don’t follow the distinction you offer — between “buying things” and “buying actual gift cards”…. ? Are you perhaps suggesting that a merchant gift card is going to be considered as NOT a cash-equivalent transaction. Have you seen any AMEX definitions of “cash equivalents?”
Given that we’re talking about 7,000.00 in spending to get the 35,000 in spg points, that’s quite the uncertain risk to not know in advance if the transactions for merchant gift cards (as recommended here) will run afoul of the AMEX RAT teams– (all sorts on ebay, Kroger, giftcards.com — wherever)….
With all due respect,, more candor on this from those of you earning commissions for selling this high-risk gambit seems much in order. (Perhaps you can consult our legal friends for their take)
Again, with the repeated caveat that I am not and have never been a huge MSer, to me there’s a pretty big difference between buying $100 Visa gift cards and buying a $100 Domino’s gift card. As I said, I don’t follow this part of things super closely so perhaps that has been covered. As for contacts, I highly doubt that there are any travel bloggers who have contacts at Amex that will definitively answer this question – I know I don’t
or as I suggested above, why not ask your contacts at AMEX? (e.g, “Are the folks who get this card going to have their points clawed back if they follow my guidance to buy merchant gift cards to count towards their minimum spend?”) Shouldn’t be a YMMV fudge…. will they, or wont’ they?