Where the offer comes from

AMEX Gold this dining powerhouse card has long had a low-spend signup bonus ($2,000/50K, and before the refresh it was even $1,000/50K). It mainly shows up in the following places:

Instagram and other social media

Starting around January, many people scrolling Instagram have been seeing AMEX Gold credit card ads offering $2,000 in spend within three months for a 50,000 MR signup bonus, like this:

  • Note that applying through this signup ad does not guarantee approval, and there have been plenty of rejection DPs.

CardMatch

This is mainly aimed at users who have never had an AMEX primary card before. If you can get targeted, you’ll usually also see the Platinum 100,000 signup bonus, so if needed, you can apply for both at the same time.

AMEX official Prequalify tool

This is also mainly aimed at users who have never had an AMEX primary card before. Just go to the AMEX homepage to check.

Targeted mail offers

This is also mainly aimed at users who have never had an AMEX primary card before. If you received a Gold offer for $2,000/50K, check CardMatch or the AMEX homepage’s Prequalify tool—there may be other good offers as well.

Notes

I don’t think this is a great offer. This low-spend offer cannot be referred. If you’re in two-player mode, have the second person refer you and apply for the public offer. Although it requires $4,000 in spend, you can get the 50,000-point offer plus the referral bonus of 10,000 to 20,000 points. AMEX has also recently increased the referral bonuses for Green and Gold; see this 101 update.

There are many ways to meet a large signup bonus spending requirement. My most common method is using Plastiq to pay rent.

If you apply for this card, after you’re approved and receive the card, don’t forget to ask customer service online whether there’s any offer to add authorized users. You might get a surprise. I once received a $2,000/50K offer through CardMatch, and customer service told me there was a $500/5K offer that allowed up to four additional cards. I then added four authorized-user cards, spent $500 on each, and ultimately completed both the authorized-user task and the signup-bonus task at the same time, earning 70K.