Amex Shop Small is now open for registration! Before you do anything else, head on over to your Amex account or app on your phone and save the offer to ALL your cards (supplementary cards included). Why? Well, this is one of the biggest Amex promotional events of the year and registrations are limited to only 130,000 cards!
In this post:
What is Shop Small?
In my humble opinion, Amex’s Shop Small event is one of the best membership perks for card members. If you play your cards right (pun intended), this benefit alone will offset a great portion of your annual card fee. Shop Small is Amex’s way of giving back to the small business community and its members by offering a cashback incentive when you spend $20 or more at a participating small business. It also highlights how widely accepted Amex is these days. Basically, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Ok, how does it work?
This year Shop Small will run from 1 November 2018 until 30 November 2018. Each card to which you save the offer will have 5 Shop Small credits; this means you can use your card to shop at 5 different merchants. When you spend $20 or more in one single transaction, American Express will credit you $10 back to your card. You can save the offer to every Amex card you own and the same goes for any supplementary cards you may have.
How to register
It’s essential you register and activate the Shop Small offer on your card(s), as the cap is only 130,000 cards; it’s safe to say that this will max out very soon (it happened last year).
- Log into your Amex account and scroll down to “Amex Offer”, it’s the best part of your Amex account (except for your points balance), and it’s where you find the Shop Small offer amongst others.
- Click the “Save to card” button, if you don’t… you’re not enrolled.
- Repeat this step for each card you want to enrol into Shop Small.
If for some reason the Shop Small offer isn’t showing up on your account or the Amex mobile app, you can also register manually on this page by entering your name and card details.
Which merchants are participating?
The answer is: more than you think! The thing with Shop Small is that Amex enrols small businesses automatically into the promotion, there’s a dedicated landing page with a handy map which lets you search for places that are participating.
From experience, this list isn’t complete, so when your local small business isn’t listed on the Amex map, the chances are that they are still enrolled in the Shop Small promotion (usually without even knowing it). An excellent example of this is market vendors who use the Square Payment system; they might not be listed, but if their business fits the criteria, it’s very likely you will get a $10 credit on your purchase of $20 or more.
When will I get the cash back?
Amex will send a notification email to the address registered with your card to let you know you successfully redeemed the offer. After the charge, it usually takes up to 5 days for the refund to show up but it can take up to 90 days.
Which Amex cards are eligible?
Most American Express cards are eligible for this promotion, including supplementary cards and David Jones issued Amex cards.
There are a few exclusions though so here they are: Corporate Cards, American Express Business Travel Accounts, Government Cards, Global Travel Cards, Business Cards that are affiliated with a wholesaler partner, Corporate Purchasing Cards, Corporate Meeting Cards and David Jones Store cards
