What Are American Express Preferred Offers?

With American Express Canada, there are typically two ways to apply for a credit card: a publicly available offer that anyone can access, and a referral offer which is accessed through a “refer-a-friend” link.

Generally speaking, the referral offer tends to be a bit better than the public offer, although they may also be the same.

Recently, Amex Canada has introduced “Preferred Offers” as a third option for credit card applications, and they appear to be better than the rest.

What Are American Express Preferred Offers?

American Express has introduced Preferred Offers as an option for applying for a credit card through a refer-a-friend link.

It’s not clear exactly when Amex introduced Preferred Offers, and it’s also not certain who is eligible to have Preferred Offers available on their accounts, nor is it obvious which cards have Preferred Offers available at any given time.

Preferred Offers appear to present an elevated welcome bonus compared to the standard referral offer and the publicly available offer, which would make them the best way to apply for an American Express product, as long as they’re available.

For example, at the time of writing, the standard publicly available welcome bonus on the American Express Cobalt Card is for up to 15,000 Membership Rewards points, structured as follows:

• Earn 1,250 MR points for each of the first 12 months in which you spend $750 (all figures in CAD)

The standard referral offer available for the Cobalt Card is the same as the best-available public offer for up to 15,000 MR points, with an identical structure:

• Earn 1,250 MR points for each of the first 12 months in which you spend $750

However, you may also notice that your refer-a-friend link has a Preferred Offer available for up to 22,000 MR points, structured as follows:

• Earn 1,250 MR points for each of the first 12 months in which you spend $750
• Plus, earn an additional 7,000 MR points upon spending $2,500 in the first three months

In other words, with a Preferred Offer on the Cobalt Card, you’ll get 7,000 more points than what’s available through the other offers, offered through meeting a minimum spending requirement in the first three months that isn’t otherwise available.

At the time of writing, the Prince of Travel team has also noticed a Preferred Offer available for up to 110,000 points on the American Express Platinum Card, which is 10,000 points…