Holy Cow! American Express Double Points At ALL Small Businesses For The Rest of 2016

Here I am just sipping my morning coffee (okay, I don’t drink coffee, it’s a smoothie) and I see that American Express has rolled out a promotion where you can earn double points at all small businesses through the end of 2016.

Historically, when they’ve promoted Small Business Saturday, the definition of a small business was very broad.  Think pretty much everything in your home town that’s not a huge chain.  Even some small chains are included.  They provide a feature called the Shop Small Map which you can use to locate businesses in your area that are part of the 2x offer.

If you take a look at this quick map of Reston, VA near where I live, you’ll see a restaurant called Vapiano, which has locations in a handful of US cities as well as overseas where they’re much larger.

You need to register for the offer, but it’s easy to do.
And, this appears to be for a wide variety of AMEX cards (if not all):

Once you click on your card type, you’ll be given a chance to register using your AMEX online credentials or the card information.  If you’re looking for the T&C on the various cards, Deals We Like has put together a pretty comprehensive list in her post.  Here’s the confirmation I received for my SPG personal AMEX:

Here’s Why This Is “BIG”

Most of the folks who ask me questions via e-mail or in person are “normal” folks who don’t spend all  year on airplanes or have hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card spend.  If you’re one of those normal folks and you’re trying to save up for a great vacation, taking advantage of 2X offers like this for your normal, everyday spending is critical to your success.

ETA: Thanks to Michael from Free Travel Guys for pointing out that I read the T&C differently than I think AMEX intended.  AMEX likely meant that only the primary cardholder can enroll in the offer, not an authorized user.  Charges on authorized user’s cards should qualify for the 2X offer.

The closest thing I can find to a “catch” in this deal is that the offer is only valid for purchases by the primary cardholder.  So, those of us with corporate accounts or significant others who hold a card can only leverage this offer so much.  Just make sure you’re putting as much spend on your primary card as possible at these merchants!

Big thanks to Deals We Like and One Mile at a Time for drawing my attention to this on an early Sunday morning!

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