AmEx Graphite Business Card Review (New Card, $1,500 Offer)
Non-affiliate disclosure: all information about this card has been collected independently by US Credit Card Guide and has not been reviewed by the issuer.
[2026.3 Update] – New card launched.
Application Link
Benefits
- $1,500 offer: earn $1,500 cash back after spending $50,000 in the first 3 months.
- Earn 5% cash back on flights and prepaid hotels booked via AmEx Travel; earn 2% cash back on everything else.
- With this card, you can get access to Amex Offer, which usually offers very good discounts at some stores, such as: spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.
- This card is very easy to get approved, because it is a charge card, not a credit card. Charge card means that you don’t have an option to make a minimum payment, you have to pay your balance in full on the due date. Charge card applications will also result in a hard credit pull, similar to credit card applications.
- Charge Cards have no pre-set spending limit.
- No foreign transaction fee.
Disadvantages
- $295 annual fee, NOT waived for the first year.
Recommended Application Time
- You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
- AmEx doesn’t care about the number of hard pulls.
- You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 6 months.
Summary
This card is essentially a very straightforward 2% cashback card. What’s puzzling is that 2% cashback with no annual fee has already become the industry standard—so why did AmEx launch a new 2% cashback card with a $295 annual fee? Comparing it to personal cards isn’t even necessary. Among business cards, both the Chase Ink Premier and Capital One Spark Cash have lower annual fees than this one. The only plausible explanation is that AmEx believes the charge card feature—having no preset spending limit—allows for extremely large spending volume, and that this alone justifies the annual fee. As long as the card’s credit limit isn’t the bottleneck for how many rewards you can earn, there’s really no reason to keep this card long term. Of course, it could still be worth getting for the welcome bonus.
Recommended Downgrade Options
- You can not downgrade this card to any card with no annual fee, so I suggest you close it when you don’t want to keep it any longer.
After Applying
- Click here to check AmEx application status.
- AmEx reconsideration backdoor number: 877-399-3083. The “real” backdoor number of Amex is well protected. Different from Chase, the representatives from this AmEx reconsideration backdoor number only have the right to help you submit requests.
Historical Offers Chart
Application Link
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