Finally, Full Details on the Business ExtrAA American Express Corporate Card

by Gary Leff

Pizza in Motion follows up with additional details on the Business ExtrAA American Express card.

It’s one of the least understood credit cards I’ve seen, it’s hard to apply for (cannot be applied for online), and the benefits aren’t even documented online. Anywhere, that I can tell.

He previously outlined some of the basics: $395 annual fee, comes with American Admirals Club access, 4% rebate on American Airlines spend and 1% on all other spend.

You call to express your interest, someone calls back to qualify you, then they’ll schedule a followup call. Seriously.

Well, he’s now apparently had his followup call and has additional answers.

It’s a true corporate card, they don’t pull your personal credit. They require $4 million in business revenue.

The 4% rebate on American purchase and 1% rebate on all spend are stackable, so it’s 5% cash back on your American Airlines air travel. And you can use that in combination with regularly available discount codes of 5% – 10% for use at AA.com.

In addition to the cash back (in the form of American Airlines gift cards), you also earn Business ExtrAA points: 3 points per $20 spend on American travel and 1 point per $20 on everything else.

So for most spend you earn 1% back plus 1/20th of a Business ExtrAA point. Not that appealing, except there are some interesting rewards in the Business ExtrAA program (which American flyers should seek to join anyway, to double dip on their American travels).

  • 3000 points for an Admirals Club membership, so requires $60,000 spend (the card comes with the benefit, but you can assign the membership to anyone)
  • 2400 points for American AAdvantage Gold status, so requires $48,000 spend (and you can assign the status to anyone)
  • 2000 points for a North America roundtrip saver award, so requires $40,000 spend — but again this is on top of the 1% cash back
  • 5400 points for a premium cabin Hawaii award, so requires $108,000 spend — on top of the 1% cash back of course.

I do wish the card was easier to apply for, and earned more Business ExtrAA points for non-American Airlines spend. But it could be useful to some. And thanks to Pizza in Motion for doing the research.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. I have one (a plain green one) through my employer. the benefits vary depending on the card type. For example, the Platinum gets Admirals Club access, but my lowly green card does not. There are other differences in the amount of coverages for AD&D (I think) and baggage.

  2. Hi Gary.

    FYI that using regularly available discount codes for 5 or 10% off at AA.com (as listed on Flyertalk) renders your ticket unable to earn Business ExtrAA credit and unable to meet their quarterly promotions. Therefore, your analysis of the benefits is a bit off.

  4. @Gary – Consider yourself lucky! I was denied the BusinessExtrAA signup promo points because my tickets used 10% off codes from Flyertalk. They also pointed to a line in their Terms and Conditions that says “discounted tickets” are not eligible for BusinessExtrAA credit.

Comments are closed.