American Express
Business card
Best business card for travel benefits
A charge card, not a credit card, so the balance is due in full each month. $799 a year buys $320 in stated credits, lounge access and a flat 1.25 points on everything with no cap.
Rates and features verified 2026-08-18Full terms and conditionsHow we research cards
What we like, and what we don’t
Worth having
- 1.25 points a dollar on every purchase with no category limits and no cap
- Membership Rewards transfer to Aeroplan at one to one, which is where the value is
- $200 annual travel credit and $120 a year in wireless credits at $10 a month
- Airport lounge access through Centurion lounges and Priority Pass
- No preset spending limit, which suits a business with lumpy monthly costs
- Employee cards let you push all company spend through one rewards pool
Watch out for
- The $799 fee is the highest of any Canadian business card
- From 1 January 2027 lounge access drops to 6 visits a year unless you spend $20,000 in the year
- It is a charge card, so there is no option to carry a balance month to month
- Amex publishes a 2.5% foreign transaction fee, so this is a poor card for buying in US dollars
- Acceptance is narrower than Visa or Mastercard, which matters for supplier payments
- Liability is joint and several, so the business and the cardholder are both on the hook
- At cash out value the points are worth about 1 cent and the maths stops working entirely
What this card earns
- Everything else
- 1.25x
- What we value a point at
- 2¢
The earning fine print
A flat 1.25 points a dollar on everything, with no categories and no cap. That sounds thin next to cards paying 5 points on travel, and on paper it is. The reason it holds up is that Membership Rewards points transfer to Aeroplan at one to one, so we value them at 2 cents. At that rate the flat earn is 2.5% on every dollar the business spends, which no cash back business card in Canada comes close to. If you redeem for statement credits instead, the same points are worth about 1 cent and the card earns 1.25%, which is a bad deal at this fee.
Fees and interest rates
- Annual fee
- $799
- Foreign transaction fee
- 2.5%
- Purchase APR
- Not published by the issuer
Who can get this card
- Personal guarantee required
- Yes you are personally liable for the balance
Insurance and benefits
- Travel medical
- $500,000 first 15 days of a trip
- Rental car damage waiver
- Included
- Airport lounge
- Included
- Annual travel credit
- $200
- Concierge
- Included
What the benefits really mean
The $200 travel credit and the $120 wireless credit are both stated by Amex and together cover $320 of the $799 fee. Lounge access today covers Centurion lounges and Priority Pass. Amex has published that from 1 January 2027 this becomes 6 visits a year unless the card records $20,000 of spend in the calendar year, so anyone signing up now should price the card on the 2027 terms rather than the current ones. Amex prices additional cards separately depending on which card you add, so we have left the supplementary fee blank rather than guess at it. Liability is joint and several: this is not a card where the company shields the owner.
Our verdict
This is the only Canadian business card built for someone who actually flies. The flat 1.25 points looks unimpressive until you notice it applies to every dollar with no cap, and that those points move to Aeroplan one for one. A business putting $150,000 a year through it earns 187,500 points, which is a pair of business class seats to Europe if you find the space.
Two things should give you pause. The lounge access, which is a large part of what you are paying for, is being cut to 6 visits a year from 1 January 2027 unless the card sees $20,000 of spend. And it is a charge card, so a slow receivables month becomes a cash flow problem rather than an interest charge. If your business cannot clear the balance every month, this is the wrong card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite Business does more for a quarter of the fee.
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Where this came from. americanexpress.com Canadian business card pages and terms, checked 2026-08-18. We take every figure from the issuer’s own pages, never from another comparison site, and we leave a field blank rather than guess at it.