Amex Credit Cards: Double Refer-a-Friend Bonuses! (Ending Soon)

Earlier this summer, American Express brought back one of its best promotions to easily pad your Membership Rewards balance.

As a reminder, you have until August 18, 2025 to earn double 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 if you want to be one step closer to a trip (or two) booked on points.

Double Refer-a-Friend Points Until August 18

Until August 18, 2025, you can earn double 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 doesn’t appear to be available on all American Express cards, so be sure to check which cards in your account are eligible. From what we can tell, the American Express Green Card, the American Express Cobalt Card, and the American Express Aeroplan Card are all ineligible. 

For the duration of this promotion, you’ll receive double (or nearly double) the usual referral bonus points with the following flagship cards:

• Business Platinum Card from American Express: 40,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 20,000 points)
• American Express Platinum Card: 30,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 15,000 points)
• American Express Business Gold Rewards Card: 30,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 15,000 points)
• American Express Gold Rewards Card: 15,000 Membership Rewards points (up from 7,500 points)
• Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card: 20,000 Bonvoy points (up from 10,000 points)
• Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card: 25,000 Bonvoy points (up from 15,000 points)
• American Express Aeroplan Reserve Card: 20,000 Aeroplan points (up from 10,000 points)
• American Express Aeroplan Business Reserve Card: 30,000 Aeroplan points (up from 20,000 points)

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 are sometimes 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. That’s because there are record-high welcome offers available on most American Express cards!

What’s the Strategy for Double 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, it’s best to focus on cards with a larger refer-a-friend bonus first.

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:

• The Business Platinum Card from American Express can refer to the Business Platinum Card, the Platinum Card, the Gold Rewards Card, the Business Gold Card, and the Cobalt Card
• The American Express Business Gold Rewards Card can refer to any Membership Rewards card (except for the American Express Green Card)
• The Marriott Bonvoy American Express Cards can refer to each other
• The American Express Aeroplan Reserve Cards can refer to each other, but not to the American Express Aeroplan Card

Indeed, being able to earn 40,000 MR points by referring from the Business Platinum Card to the Cobalt Card is one of the easiest ways to leverage this promotion.

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
• Marriott Bonvoy cards: 150,000 Bonvoy points
• Aeroplan Business Reserve Card: 150,000 Aeroplan points

If you don’t yet have a Business Platinum Card, there’s potentially enough time to apply and generate referrals; however, even if you don’t get a new card in time for this round of double referrals, you’ll be set up for the next time this promotion comes. 

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.

This also comes at a time when there are record-high offers on almost every Amex card, making it a feeding frenzy for Miles & Points enthusiasts.

Be sure to have your family and friends apply for new Amex cards using your referral links before August 18, 2025.