Small Business Saturday 2014

In about 2 months from now, we'll get another Small Business Saturday on November 29, 2014. I mentioned SBS before in the past few years. Basically, American Express is trying hard to promote smaller businesses so that more of these merchants will accept Amex cards.

Merchants generally don't want customers to pay with an Amex, because they're charged higher transaction processing fees than from Visa or Mastercard. But let's face it, Amex is here to stay, and merchants don't want to lose out on potential business by not accepting the credit cards their customers have.

In 2012, Amex offered a $25 statement credit on each registered Amex card whenever it was used to make a purchase of at least $25 at a qualifying small business. In 2013, they reduced it to $10 statement credits per Amex card. But regardless of the specific dollar amount, the best part of this promotion is that each one of your American Express cards could be registered (including multiple authorized user cards under a single master account).

This year, they're sticking with the $10 level, but allowing you to do it 3x per Amex card! Click here for details. So you can get $30 of free purchases for each of your Amex cards - as long as you break it up into 3 separate transactions. I won't go into all the details, since you can read about them at Frequent Miler's post here.

Imagine you had just 3 different Amex cards. That's up to $90 of free purchases as long as you spend it across 9 different transactions of $10 each. Not bad at all! Free Tip: Many local restaurants will qualify for Small Business Saturday and sell $10 gift certificates that can be used (and combined) for later.

Just remember, that to make your Amex cards eligible for Small Business Saturday, you need to sign up online and register each on Sunday, November 16th. It's a limited offer so don't wait too long.

So how many American Express cards does my family have? Well, let's just say we're in for a very, very busy Saturday, November 29th...