Never shy about putting out exciting promotions, American Express Canada brought back one of its best earlier this year. As a reminder, you have until March 4, 2024 to earn double or triple points for referring a friend!

Let’s take a look at how the offer works, how you can benefit, and why you should act soon.

Double or Triple Refer-a-Friend Points Until March 4

Until March 4, 2024, you can earn double or triple the standard referral bonus for each approved referral on your Canadian-issued American Express cards.

An “approved referral” is when a family member, friend, or colleague applies and is approved for a new American Express card, using the referral link from one of your existing American Express cards.

This offer is available on all American Express cards, as long as the card does referrals in the first place, with the exception of the Business Edge Card, the Marriott Bonvoy Business Card, and the Amex Green Card. Otherwise, all cards from the full spread of rewards programs are eligible, whether they earn the flexible Membership Rewards points, or points through co-branded Aeroplan or Marriott Bonvoy cards.

For the duration of this promotion, you’ll receive triple the usual referral bonus points with the following flagship cards:

• Platinum Card: 30,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 10,000 points)
• Aeroplan Reserve Card: 30,000 Aeroplan points (up from 10,000 points)

Meanwhile, you’ll receive double the points with the rest of the Amex line-up:

• Business Platinum Card: 40,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 20,000 points)
• Business Gold Card: 30,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 15,000 points)
• Gold Card: 15,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 7,500 points)
• Cobalt Card: 10,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 5,000 points)
• Aeroplan Business Reserve Card: 40,000 Aeroplan points (up from 20,000 points)
• Aeroplan Card: 10,000 Aeroplan points (up from 5,000 points)
• Marriott Bonvoy Card: 20,000 Bonvoy points (up from 10,000 points)

Note that there is no elevated referral bonus on the Marriott Bonvoy Business Card or the Business Edge Card.

This promotion only affects the points earned by the existing cardholder who generates the referral link. The approved new cardholder’s welcome bonus is unchanged; however, it’s worth noting that referral offers tend to be better than the publicly available offers.

As a result, it’s a great time to work your referral network, for an even bigger win-win than usual.

What’s the Strategy for Double or Triple Refer-a-Friend Points?

First things first, you’ll need to be an American Express cardholder yourself to benefit from this promotion.

Whether you can make one referral or several, this promotion is really quite simple. You’ll benefit more if you can make more referrals, but you can still capitalize on this offer if your network is more limited.

This offer is quite strong for anyone using Miles & Points in multiplayer mode, where several members of the same household earn, pool, and redeem rewards together. 

Plus, if you’ve been trying to convince your significant other to start applying for Amex cards, you can use the larger total available to demonstrate the value of getting in the game.

As for the recommended sequence of cards to apply for, if you’re limited by the number of cards you can apply for in a short span of time, it’s best to focus on cards with a larger refer-a-friend bonus first.

For example, let’s say your partner applies for a new Business Platinum Card using your Platinum Card referral before March 4, as well as a new Cobalt Card using your Business Gold referral after March 4. In this situation, you (the referrer) would earn 30,000 points now (triple on the Platinum Card), plus 15,000 points later (regular on the Business Gold), for a total of 45,000 points.

If you applied in the other order, however, you’d earn 30,000 points now (double on the Business Gold) plus 10,000 points later (regular on the Platinum Card), for a total of 40,000 points.

As a reminder, these bonuses are based on the card that you refer from, not the card you refer to. These are the ideal cards to use to initiate a referral, and the eligible cards to which they each refer:

• Business Platinum can refer to Business Platinum, Business Gold, and Platinum
• Business Gold can refer to any Membership Rewards card
• Aeroplan cards can refer to each other, but premium cards cannot refer to the core card
• Bonvoy cards can refer to each other

For those looking to maximize the points you can earn from this opportunity, the annual limit for referral points earned on each card remains unchanged. These limits reset every calendar year, so there won’t be a reset during this promotion.

Here are the limits on a few key cards, which are the best ones to initiate referrals from:

• Business Platinum Card: 225,000 Membership Rewards points
• Business Gold Card: 75,000 Membership Rewards points
• Aeroplan Reserve Card: 150,000 Aeroplan points
• Aeroplan Card: 75,000 Aeroplan points
• Bonvoy cards: 150,000 Bonvoy points

If you have no problem blowing through your annual referral limits, you may have to consider initiating a referral from a sub-optimal card. For instance, your Business Gold limit will be filled very quickly, after just three approved referrals with the current promotion.

In that case, if your peer group is looking to apply for Gold and Cobalt cards, you’d have to start generating those referral links from your own Gold or Cobalt cards. Even though the points per referral are lower than you’d get for initiating the process from your Business Gold Card, once your cup is full, you may as well grab an empty one and keep the points flowing.

Conclusion

American Express continues to set the bar with the best Canadian credit card offers. This time, they’ve put on an impressive bonus for existing cardholders to refer new cards to their friends and family.

Be sure to have your family and friends apply for new Amex cards using your referral links before March 4, 2024.