How to Use Your Amex with PayRewards

If you run a business on an American Express card, you already earn Membership Rewards on your everyday spend. Use your Amex with PayRewards and those same payments earn a second time, you keep your full Amex Membership Rewards and collect PayRewards Points on top.

Here’s why that matters: your card only earns when a vendor accepts it, and a lot of a business’s largest costs never touch a card at all – business invoices, rent, utilities and the vendors who normally only accept checks or ACH. PayRewards gets around that by paying those vendors for you while charging your Amex as a normal purchase, then adds our own points on top. You end up earning twice on money you had to spend anyway. And because big business payments are where Amex’s earning structure rewards you most, Amex makes a strong case for being your primary card on the platform.

How Amex Works with PayRewards

PayRewards sits between your card and the people you pay. Instead of paying a vendor’s bank account directly with a card, which usually isn’t possible, you fund the payment with your Amex, and PayRewards delivers it to the recipient by ACH, wire, or paper check. To your vendor it arrives as an ordinary deposit or check; to Amex it’s a standard card purchase, so your Membership Rewards accrue as usual.

The flow is straightforward:

1. Add your eligible Amex business card to your PayRewards account.
2. Add the payee and choose how they get paid: ACH, wire, or check.
3. Enter the amount and confirm. Amex charges your card, and PayRewards delivers the funds to the recipient.
4. Amex awards Membership Rewards on the charge, and you choose whether to add PayRewards Points on the same payment.

Since each payment runs as a standard card purchase, nothing about your Amex account changes – you keep your normal earn rate, your credit line, and your usual interest-free window. That last part is a handy cash-flow lever when you’re pushing large bills through the platform.

Why Amex is Perfect to use on PayRewards

All three major networks work with PayRewards, but if your goal is maximizing points, Amex has a built-in edge for the large payments businesses tend to make.

Large payments earn 2X. On the American Express Business Platinum Card, any eligible purchase of $5,000 or more earns 2X Membership Rewards, up to $2 million per calendar year. A typical business payment clears that threshold without trouble, whether it’s a vendor invoice, a month’s rent, or a large vendor bill, so it earns at twice the standard rate. For high-value B2B payments, that beats most flat-rate business cards.

Membership Rewards are flexible. Amex Membership Rewards transfer to a wide range of airline and hotel partners, and transferring is usually where the points are worth the most. Add PayRewards Points alongside them and a single payment builds two separate balances you can spend.

Acceptance stops being a problem. The common complaint about Amex is that plenty of vendors won’t take it. Here, you’re not asking them to –  they get paid by ACH, wire, or check, and your Amex stays in the background. The one real weakness Amex has for B2B spending mostly goes away.

One honest caveat worth knowing, since it affects which card to pick: category bonuses don’t apply to PayRewards payments. The Business Gold Card’s 4X on top categories, for instance, drops to 1X here. The value comes from the Business Platinum’s 2X on large purchases rather than from category multipliers.

Eligible Amex Business Cards

These American Express business cards can be linked to PayRewards:

• American Express Business Platinum Card: The best fit for the platform. The annual fee is $895, and it earns 2X Membership Rewards on purchases of $5,000 or more (up to $2M a year), 1X otherwise.
• American Express Business Gold Card: A $375 annual fee. Its 4X category bonuses don’t apply to PayRewards payments, so platform spend earns 1X. Still worth holding if you want Membership Rewards earning on a lower-fee card.
• American Express Blue Business Plus: No annual fee. It earns 2X on the first $50,000 of purchases each year, then 1X, and it isn’t category-restricted.
• American Express Corporate Cards: Eligible subject to your company’s card policy.

Earn rates, fees, and benefits are set by American Express and change over time, so confirm the current terms on your specific card before planning around them.

How You Earn Double Rewards

“Double rewards” isn’t a figure of speech. Two separate currencies build up on the same transaction:

1. Amex Membership Rewards: earned by American Express on the card charge (2X on Business Platinum purchases of $5,000+, otherwise 1X).
2. PayRewards Points: an optional add-on you choose per payment.

The two don’t interfere with each other. Amex won’t reduce your earnings because you’re collecting PayRewards Points, and the reverse holds too. PayRewards Points come in two tiers, and you pick one per transaction:

• Core: 1 PayRewards Point per $1, for a 1.75% fee on the payment.
• Plus: 2 PayRewards Points per $1, for a 3.25% fee on the payment.

Those points fees sit on top of the standard card service fee, which is 2.9% for card-funded payments, plus any delivery fee ($16 for a wire, $5 for a check). The fees are real, so it helps to run an actual example rather than guess. Say you put a $20,000 vendor invoice on a Business Platinum and pay by card on the Plus tier:

• Points earned: about 40,000 Amex Membership Rewards (2X, since the payment clears $5,000) plus 40,000 PayRewards Points (2 per $1 on the Plus tier), 80,000 points in all.
• Point value: at around 2 cents per point when you transfer to airline partners, those 80,000 points are worth roughly $1,600.
• Fees: the 3.25% PayRewards Points fee adds $650, and the 2.9% card service fee applies to the full $20,650 you’re charged (the payment plus that fee), which comes to about $599. That’s roughly $1,249 before any delivery fee. Because those fees are a deductible business expense, at a 25% tax rate the real cost is closer to $935.

Whether that comes out ahead depends on what your points are worth to you when you redeem them. The cleanest way to see your own numbers is to run them through the PayRewards calculator, which stacks your card points and PayRewards Points for the payment amount and tier you choose.

One practical note: the 2X rate on the Business Platinum only triggers on payments of $5,000 or more, so consolidating payments rather than splitting them earns more.

Amex Membership Rewards + PayRewards Points: The Double-Dip

The double-dip is strongest when the card and the payment are well matched. Put a single payment of $5,000 or more on the Business Platinum and the same transaction earns 2X Membership Rewards along with whatever PayRewards Points tier you chose – that’s two balances from one transaction. Smaller payments, or cards without the 2X-over-$5,000 feature, earn 1X on the card side, but the PayRewards Points still stack on top.

The strategy more or less writes itself – link your Business Platinum, send your large and unavoidable business payments through it, and set your PayRewards tier according to how much the points are worth to you against the fee. Payments that would have earned nothing the usual way now earn in two currencies at once.

Transfer Partners: Where Your Points Can Take You

The two currencies transfer through separate networks, so you’re never choosing one over the other.

Amex Membership Rewards move to a wide range of US and international airline and hotel partners. Transferred into a frequent flyer program and put toward a business or first-class seat, they usually return far more than you’d get from a statement credit. American Express sets the partners and transfer ratios and adjusts them over time, so check your account before you commit to a plan.

PayRewards Points are flexible rewards which means they can be redeemed for anything you want with our custom redemption option. A custom redemption can range from luxury watches to kitchen renovations- if you can dream it, you can redeem it. But, our most popular redemption option is a transfer to our fast growing list of travel partners and gift cards. Visit our website for more information on how to use your points, your way.

How to Link Your Amex

1. Create your PayRewards account at payrewards.com/register.
2. Add your eligible Amex business card from the list above.
3. Set up your payees and choose how each one gets paid – ACH, wire, or check.
4. Make your first payment. Amex charges your card, PayRewards delivers the funds, and you decide whether to add PayRewards Points.
5. Route your recurring spend through the platform, from vendor invoices and rent to payroll, insurance, and vendors.

For more resources on how PayRewards works, see the PayRewards program overview, the credit cards hub, and the business expenses hub.

FAQ

1. Do I earn my full card rewards when paying through PayRewards? Yes. Each payment runs as a standard card purchase, so your Amex earns Membership Rewards as usual: 2X on Business Platinum purchases of $5,000+, and 1X otherwise. Category bonuses like the Business Gold’s 4X don’t apply to PayRewards payments. PayRewards Points are an optional layer on the same payment.
2. Are there caps on PayRewards Points? PayRewards doesn’t cap the points you earn through the platform. Your card might, though. The Business Platinum’s 2X, for example, applies up to $2 million in qualifying purchases a year, so check your card’s terms.
3. Can I pay vendors who don’t accept my card? Yes, this it’s the core of what PayRewards does. You fund the payment with your Amex, and PayRewards pays the recipient by ACH, wire, or check. Because the vendor never has to accept Amex, you can cover vendors, rent, and bills that have never taken a card.
4. Does PayRewards charge a fee? Yes. Card-funded payments carry a 2.9% service fee, while ACH-funded payments have none. Delivery costs $16 by wire or $5 by check. PayRewards Points are optional: 1.75% for 1 point per $1, or 3.25% for 2 points per $1. Weigh all of those fees against what your points are worth. Learn more about our fee structure.
5. Are PayRewards Points transferable? Yes. Your Amex Membership Rewards transfer to Amex’s own partners separately, the same as on any other spend. For more information please see a list of our transfer partners and available gift cards.
6. Can I use a personal Amex card? Yes. While PayRewards is built for business payments, you can use a personal Amex card as well. Your card earns Membership Rewards as it normally would, and you can stack PayRewards Points on top.
7. How do Amex Membership Rewards stack with PayRewards Points? They accrue independently on the same payment. Amex awards Membership Rewards on the card charge, and PayRewards awards its points on the amount processed whenever you choose to add them. One transaction, both rewards. That’s the double-dip.

Earn rates, fees, transfer partners, point values, and card eligibility are set by American Express and PayRewards and can change. Confirm current details on your specific card and at payrewards.com before making decisions. This page is general information, not financial advice

Written by PayRewards

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