Amex Preferred Reward Gold: Boosted welcome bonus

Earn points & cashback worth up to £235

From 6 November 2024 to 14 January 2025, the welcome offer is increased on the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold credit card.

Here’s what you need to know.

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What is the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold credit card?

This card from Amex is free in the first year, but costs a huge £195 a year from the second year onwards – so it’s best to only get this one for a single year and then cancel it.

You’ll earn Amex Membership Reward points with your spending. There’s a set 1 point per £1 spent. These points can be swapped for gift cards or Nectar points at a value of 0.5p per point, or 1:1 to many airline partners.

However there are also bonus points triggered when you hit spending thresholds, so the card can potentially give you a return of close to 0.75%.

You can find more details on how the Preferred Rewards Gold card works, the value of it’s cashback work and other features in our full Amex Gold credit card review.

Standard American Express Preferred Rewards welcome offer

Standard: earn 20,000 points

When you first apply for the card you may be able to get a welcome bonus, usually 20,000 Amex Reward Points. That’s worth £100 as a gift card as Nectar. To be eligible for the Gold card bonus you cannot have had any Amex in your name in the last two years.

There’s also a minimum spend required to trigger the bonus. Spend a penny less and you’ll get nothing. This is usually £3,000 in the first three months. Those points would be worth another £15, giving you a total of £115.

The generic offer for this Amex card runs all year. You’ll get a little more if you apply via a refer-a-friend offer or a cashback site, but personally I’d always wait for one of the increased offers that tend to run two or three times a year.

Boosted American Express Preferred Rewards welcome offer

Boosted: earn 30,000 points

The latest increased offer runs from 6 November 2024 to 14 January 2025.

At 30,000 Amex Reward points, it’s worth 10,000 more points than the standard offer. This is better by 5,000 points than the boosted deal that ran in the summer of 2024.

As with the normal offer you need to spend £3,000 in three months to get this offer. Doing that will earn you another 3,000 points and a total of 33,000. That adds up to £165 as gift cards.

As with most other Amex welcome offers you can’t have had any Amex account in your name in the last 24 months (that doesn’t include supplementary cardholders).

Additional offers

Extra 10,000 points referral bonus

You can get another 10,000 on top if you apply in the first place via a referral link, worth another £50. That’s a total of 40,000 points, plus 3,000 for the spending, adding up to 43,000 Amex points. That’s worth £215 as a gift voucher or in Nectar points.

However, I think it’s worth skipping this for a cashback site offer instead as that could be worth much more.

£70 extra via cashback sites

There’s the potential to get a bonus of up to £70 on top if you apply via TopCashback or Quidco. The rates do change, so compare both sites to see which pays the most.

Going via one of these sites will give you the the lower increased 30,000 point bonus and not the 40,000 refer-a-friend offer, but overall you’ll be up by £20 with a total of £235.

This table breaks down what you’ll make from the offer depending on whether you go via TopCashback or a friend’s link at the time of writing.