American Express Shop Small cashback scheme returns

Amex will pay you £5 cashback when you spend £10 or more using one of its cards at participating small businesses this month.

American Express has relaunched its Shop Small scheme, allowing you to earn up to £50 back in July by shopping at small businesses using your Amex card.

The Shop Small scheme previously ran in November last year, and our own Donna Ferguson managed to earn £90 back.

The scheme is simple: if you spend £10 or more in any participating business and pay using an American Express credit or charge card, you'll earn £5 back. This time though the cash you can earn is capped at £50 and you can only earn £5 back once at each participating business, meaning you could spend at a total of ten different businesses.

You also won’t earn any rewards – such as cashback, American Express Membership Rewards or Avios – on the £5 credits you get back. They’ll simply be added to your card statement as a credit, usually within three to five working days.

Are many businessess signed up?

I live in a village in East Sussex so wasn’t expecting many opportunities to earn fivers when I entered my postcode into the interactive map.

To my surprise, I can earn money at one of my local pubs, a nearby garden centre, and various takeaways, restaurants and shops in neighbouring towns. Pretty impressive, and I’ll be helping small businesses if I spend there.

However, we are aware that last time this scheme was run there was a dearth of offers in some parts of the UK. I did a quick check for Scotland and there seemed to be plenty of participating businesses in the central belt this time but we can’t guarantee this everywhere.

Top Amex cards

Needless to say, it’s a false economy to spend unnecessarily just to earn some money back.

But if you want a new credit card and don’t have an Amex, the company has a number of decent credit and charge cards out there at the moment which are worth considering even if you’re not impressed by this scheme.

For instance, the Platinum Everyday Cashback credit card has just been relaunched. This pays 5% cashback on up to £2,000 of spending within the first three months. If you have a big purchase coming up and you have the money in the bank, this will earn you up to £100 cashback.

The card then pays cashback of between 0.5% and 1.25%, depending on how much you spend each month. It has a representative APR of 19.9%.

The Platinum Cashback card, meanwhile, pays the same 5% during the first three months and then a fixed 1.25% on any spending after that. However, it charges a £25 annual fee. The representative APR is 18.7%.

If you prefer rewards to hard cash, the Preferred Rewards Gold charge card is offering 20,000 Membership Rewards points if you spend £2,000 in the first three months you have the card. That could pay for a return flight (excluding taxes and charges) to the likes of Istanbul.

You can earn double points on petrol and major supermarket spending in the first year. You also get two free airport lounge passes each year. This card comes with a £125 annual fee but at the moment Amex is waiving this for the first year. But make sure you cancel before the end of your first year if you don’t want to pay the fee.

Note also that this is a charge card, not a credit card, so you HAVE to pay your balance in full each month.

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