If you're running any kind of business in April 2026, even a freelance side hustle with a single LLC, the welcome bonuses on the major business credit cards are doing more for your travel budget than almost any consumer card on the market. The Amex Business Gold is sitting at a 130,000 Membership Rewards welcome bonus on $10,000 of spend in three months. The Chase Ink Business Preferred is at 100,000 Ultimate Rewards on $8,000 in three months. Two cards, two different rewards currencies, two different sweet spots when you transfer to airline and hotel partners. The right answer for most business owners isn't picking one. It's running both.

This is the guide that walks through the welcome-bonus math, the transfer-partner sweet spots that make these points worth two to three cents apiece instead of one, the churning rules nobody explains clearly (Chase 5/24, Amex once-per-lifetime), and how to stack the Ink lineup and the Amex business lineup into a multi-card strategy that pays for years of travel. If you've been spending $50,000-plus a year on business expenses with a no-rewards card, this is the article that fixes that.

Key Points

  • The Amex Business Gold's 130,000-point welcome bonus and the Chase Ink Preferred's 100,000-point bonus are the two biggest sign-up bonuses on the small-business market in April 2026.
  • Chase 5/24 does not apply to most business cards on the way out — Ink approvals don't count toward your 5/24 number, so under-5/24 applicants can stack three Ink cards in a year.
  • The right move for most business owners is stacking Chase Ink and Amex Business cards in sequence, not picking one ecosystem. The transfer-partner overlap between Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards is small enough that you want both currencies.

TL;DR

In April 2026, the Amex Business Gold gives you 130,000 Membership Rewards on $10K spend; the Chase Ink Preferred gives you 100,000 Ultimate Rewards on $8K. Stack both. Transfer partners do the work.

Why Business Cards Beat Consumer Cards Right Now

Two reasons. First, the welcome bonuses are bigger. The biggest consumer Ultimate Rewards bonus on the market this spring is the 75,000-point Sapphire Preferred offer. The Ink Preferred, the business version, is at 100,000 with a slightly higher spend requirement. Same currency, same transfer partners, 33 percent more points. The Amex side is even more lopsided: the consumer Gold sits at 60,000 Membership Rewards in most cycles. The Business Gold is at 130,000 right now. More than double.

Second, the application rules are friendlier. Business cards from Chase don't count toward the 5/24 rule on approval (more on that below). Amex business cards run on a separate 5-card limit from the consumer 5-card limit, so you can hold five business charge cards and five consumer charge cards from Amex at the same time. The whole structure is designed around the assumption that businesses spend differently than consumers, and the rewards programs reflect that.

What counts as a "business" for these applications is wider than people assume. Sole proprietors qualify. Freelancers with a single 1099 client qualify. Etsy sellers, eBay flippers, side-hustle consultants, anyone with a real revenue stream and a real EIN (or your SSN as an SP). The application asks for business name, revenue, and years in business. Honest answers in line with what you actually do are fine.

The Welcome-Bonus Landscape (April 2026)

Here's where the major business cards sit this month. These are subject to change cycle to cycle, so confirm the offer on the application page before you apply.

Chase Ink Preferred (typical $95 annual fee)

100,000 Ultimate Rewards on $8,000 spend in three months. At a 1.8-cent-per-point redemption (which is conservative when you transfer to Hyatt or United), that's $1,800 in travel value before you've earned a single point on ongoing spend. The card itself earns 3x on travel, shipping, internet/cable/phone, and online advertising. Cell phone insurance is included and is genuinely good. There's a transfer to all 14 Ultimate Rewards travel partners.

Chase Ink Business Cash and Chase Ink Business Unlimited (typical $0 annual fee)

75,000 Ultimate Rewards on $6,000 spend in three months, on each card. These two cards earn at different rates (Cash is 5x on office supplies, internet, cable, phone up to $25,000/year; Unlimited is a flat 1.5x on everything), and Chase issues them as separate products, so you can apply for both within a window if you're under 5/24. Two 75,000-point bonuses on $12,000 of total spend is 150,000 Ultimate Rewards for $0 in annual fees.

Amex Business Gold ($375 annual fee)

130,000 Membership Rewards on $10,000 spend in three months. Earns 4x on your top two spending categories each month from a list that includes advertising, transit, electronics, US restaurants, and gas. The 4x is capped at $150,000 of combined annual spend on those categories, then drops to 1x. There are statement credits for FedEx, Grubhub, and office supplies (~$240 in annual credits if you actually use them).

Amex Business Platinum ($695 annual fee)

150,000 Membership Rewards on $20,000 spend in three months. Premium travel benefits including Centurion lounge access, $200 airline fee credit, $400 Dell credit ($200 semi-annually), and 5x on flights and prepaid hotels booked through Amex Travel. The annual fee is steep, but for businesses that actually travel, the credits and lounge access cover most of it.

Amex Blue Business Plus ($0 annual fee)

15,000 Membership Rewards welcome bonus and 2x on the first $50,000 of spend each year. This is the Membership Rewards earner you keep open forever to ferry points from your higher-fee Amex business cards into a flexible Membership Rewards account.

Amex Blue Business Cash ($0 annual fee)

$250 statement credit welcome bonus and 2 percent cash back on the first $50,000 of spend. Cash back, not points. For businesses that aren't trying to chase travel rewards, this is the simplest no-annual-fee earner on the market.

Capital One Spark Miles for Business ($95 annual fee, waived first year)

200,000 miles on $30,000 spend in three months in current cycles. Capital One miles transfer to a different (and slightly less premium) set of partners than Amex or Chase, but the volume of the bonus makes it competitive on raw value. Less interesting for transfer partner enthusiasts; useful for high-spend businesses.

Churning Eligibility: The Rules That Decide Who Gets Approved

This is the section that matters more than anything else. The two big rules to know:

Chase 5/24 (and How Business Cards Work Around It)

The 5/24 rule says Chase will deny most consumer card applications if you've opened five or more credit cards (from any issuer) in the past 24 months. Business cards from Chase, including the Ink Preferred, Ink Cash, and Ink Unlimited, do not show up on your personal credit report once they're opened, which means an approved Ink card does not increase your 5/24 count. But Chase still checks 5/24 at the time of application — you have to be under 5/24 when you apply, even though the resulting card won't push you over.

The implication is the Ink stack play: if you're at, say, 3/24 right now, you can apply for the Ink Preferred (still 3/24 from Chase's perspective). Three months later, apply for the Ink Cash (still 3/24, the Ink Preferred didn't add to the count). Three months after that, apply for the Ink Unlimited. You've collected three Chase business welcome bonuses (100K + 75K + 75K = 250,000 Ultimate Rewards) in nine months without changing your 5/24 status. This is the single biggest churn-the-system play in the points world right now, and most consumer-card-focused content doesn't cover it.

Amex Once-Per-Lifetime

Amex enforces a once-per-lifetime rule on welcome bonuses for each individual card. If you've ever earned the Business Gold welcome bonus on a previous Business Gold, you cannot earn it again. There's no statute of limitations on this, although Amex's pre-approval tool will sometimes surface a "you're targeted for this offer" message that overrides the once-per-lifetime rule for that specific application. Always run the pre-approval tool before applying for an Amex card you've previously held.

The good news: Business Gold and Business Platinum are separate products in Amex's eyes, as are Blue Business Plus and Blue Business Cash. Holding the Business Gold today doesn't disqualify you from the Business Platinum welcome bonus. The five-card business charge limit (which is separate from the consumer five-card charge limit) is the binding constraint on how many Amex business products you can stack.

The Velocity Limits Nobody Mentions

Amex applies a soft "two cards in 90 days" rule that isn't formally published. Apply for more than two Amex cards (across consumer and business) in any 90-day window and approvals slow down. Chase has a similar "two cards in 30 days" rule that's enforced more formally on the consumer side and somewhat on the business side. If you're stacking, space applications by 90 days minimum to keep approvals clean.

For a deeper walkthrough of the full credit card application process and what scoring bands fit which cards, the step-by-step apply guide covers the mechanics, and the Amex credit score guide covers the FICO bands for the major Amex products.

Transfer Partner Sweet Spots: The Real Reason to Care

The welcome bonus is the headline, but transfer-partner redemptions are where business-card points become actually valuable. A Membership Rewards point is worth one cent if you cash it out for a statement credit. The same point is worth 2.5 to 3 cents if you transfer it to Aeroplan and book the right itinerary. That's a 2.5x to 3x value swing, and it's the difference between a 130,000-point welcome bonus being worth $1,300 and being worth $3,500.

Amex Membership Rewards: The Three Partners That Matter

Membership Rewards transfers to 14 airline partners and three hotel partners. Three of them carry the redemption value. The rest are filler.

Air Canada Aeroplan (1:1 transfer). Aeroplan's distance-based award chart is the best-priced way to fly United metal across the Atlantic in business class. 70,000 Aeroplan miles for a one-way US-to-Europe business class flight on United, Lufthansa, or Swiss is a structural sweet spot that hasn't moved in two years. Aeroplan also includes a stopover for 5,000 miles, which is the kind of feature that, if you know, you know.

ANA Mileage Club (1:1). ANA's round-trip-required award chart is the cheapest way to book Star Alliance business class to Asia. 75,000 ANA miles round-trip US to Tokyo in business class is the headline. The 90,000-mile round-trip in first class on ANA's own metal is the trip-of-a-lifetime redemption.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (1:1). The Virgin-to-ANA partnership is technically still alive in spring 2026, although Virgin has slowly tightened the chart. The current sweet spot is 47,500 Virgin Atlantic points one-way Tokyo-to-LA in ANA business class, which is one of the cheapest ways to fly that route in any premium cabin. Virgin also partners with Delta, which opens up Delta One redemptions at meaningfully better prices than booking through Delta directly.

For a deeper breakdown of every Amex transfer partner and which ones to use for which routes, the American Express transfer partners guide goes deep on the math.

Chase Ultimate Rewards: The Four Partners That Matter

Ultimate Rewards transfers to 11 airline partners and three hotel partners. The hotel side is what makes Chase points special.

World of Hyatt (1:1). The headline. Hyatt's award chart caps Category 1 hotels at 5,000 points and Category 4 hotels (where Park Hyatts often sit) at 18,000. Compare that to Marriott or Hilton, where the same-tier hotels routinely run 60,000 or 95,000 points per night. A single Ink Preferred welcome bonus of 100,000 Ultimate Rewards is 5+ nights at a Park Hyatt or 20 nights at a budget Hyatt Place. There is no other hotel transfer partner in the points world that competes with this.

United MileagePlus (1:1). United is a useful Ultimate Rewards partner because it has its own decent award chart and access to Star Alliance. Not the headline, but the workhorse.

Air Canada Aeroplan (1:1). Same Aeroplan partner that Amex transfers to, which means you can pool Membership Rewards and Ultimate Rewards into a single Aeroplan account for big award bookings. This is the most important reason most business owners run both currencies.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (1:1). Same Virgin partner Amex transfers to. Again, the pooling case is real.

For more on how Ultimate Rewards stacks up next to consumer cards in the same family, the Chase Sapphire Preferred review covers the consumer side.

Earning Categories: How These Cards Actually Earn Points Day-to-Day

The welcome bonus is the headline; the ongoing earn rate is what makes a card stick in your wallet. Here's how the major business cards earn on real spend.

Amex Business Gold

4x points on your top two spending categories each month, capped at $150,000 of combined annual spend across those categories. Categories rotate from a fixed list: US advertising, US gas stations, US transit (Uber, Lyft, transit fares, parking), US restaurants, US wireless and cable, US shipping, electronics, and computer hardware/software/cloud. The "top two" feature is the differentiator. If you spend $5,000 on advertising one month and $4,000 on transit, those two categories automatically earn 4x. Next month, if you flip to gas and dining, those flip to 4x.

The catch: at $150,000 of annual category spend, the rate drops to 1x. For most small businesses, that ceiling is well above actual spend, so the 4x effectively applies all year.

Chase Ink Preferred

3x points on travel, shipping, internet/cable/phone, and online advertising up to $150,000 in combined annual spend (then 1x). 1x on everything else. Not as flashy as Amex's flexing 4x, but the categories are big buckets that most businesses spend in heavily, and the 3x is locked in regardless of monthly mix.

Chase Ink Business Cash

5x on office supplies, internet/cable/phone (up to $25,000/year). 2x on gas and dining. 1x on everything else. The 5x cap is small but the office-supply category covers gift card purchases at Staples and Office Depot, which is the single most exploited business-card category in the entire churning hobby.

Chase Ink Business Unlimited

1.5x on every purchase, no caps. Useful as a "spend everywhere" card and for the welcome bonus, less interesting beyond that.

The Stack: How to Run Multiple Business Cards

The right strategy for most business owners isn't picking one card. It's stacking three to five over an 18-month period.

A clean opening sequence for someone under 5/24:

  1. Month 1. Apply for Chase Ink Preferred. 100K Ultimate Rewards welcome bonus.
  2. Month 4. Apply for Chase Ink Business Cash. 75K Ultimate Rewards welcome bonus.
  3. Month 7. Apply for Amex Business Gold (separate ecosystem, parallel timing). 130K Membership Rewards.
  4. Month 10. Apply for Chase Ink Business Unlimited. 75K Ultimate Rewards. You now have 250K UR + 130K MR = 380K points across two ecosystems, all in 10 months on roughly $32,000 of business spend.
  5. Month 16. Apply for Amex Business Platinum if your spend supports the $20K spend requirement. 150K Membership Rewards.

For lodging-heavy businesses, swap one of the slots for a Hilton Business or Marriott Business hotel-cobranded card, which carries free-night certificates that often outvalue the points themselves on premium-property redemptions. For consumer-card pairings, the Chase Sapphire Preferred earns into the same Ultimate Rewards account as your Ink cards, which means you can pool every Ink welcome bonus with Sapphire Preferred earnings for a single Hyatt or United transfer.

What I'd Actually Do (April 2026)

If you've never opened a business card and you're under 5/24: start with the Ink Preferred. It's the best welcome bonus per dollar of spend on the Chase side, the annual fee is $95, and the Hyatt transfer partner is the most-leveraged single redemption in the points world. Three months later, apply for the Ink Business Cash for the second 75K bonus. By that point, you'll have a feel for whether the points game is worth the application cadence, and the Amex Business Gold becomes the obvious next move. Skip the Capital One Spark unless you spend so heavily that the 200K-mile bonus on $30K of spend is a faster path than two Ink approvals.

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