Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card review: One of the top co-branded business travel rewards cards

You’ll receive a Companion Certificate on Main Cabin domestic, Caribbean, or Central American roundtrip flights each year after renewing your card. This can be an especially valuable perk when you use it on more expensive flights. The Companion Certificate requires payment of government-imposed taxes and fees of between $22 and $250 (for itineraries with up to four flight segments). Baggage charges and other restrictions apply. Travel must be completed by the certificate’s expiration date.

The Delta Business Platinum recently added monthly credits to enhance the card’s value. You can get up to $120 in Resy credit (up to $10 per month in statement credits on eligible Resy purchases using your enrolled card), as well as up to $10 back in statement credits each month after you use your card to pay for U.S. rideshare purchases with select providers (enrollment required). The rideshare credit is ideal for covering a portion of a ride each month. You can search for participating Resy restaurants through their app or website. 

While smaller monthly credits can be more difficult to fully maximize, they provide substantial value if you’re able to maximize these newly-added features. 

You can get an annual statement credit of up to $200 when you use your card to book prepaid hotels or vacation rentals through the Delta Stays travel portal on delta.com. This credit can come in handy for stays not affiliated with hotel chains. 

Make sure not to choose the “pay at property” option, otherwise your stay won’t be eligible for the credit.  

The Delta Platinum Business card offers several travel benefits that can provide substantial value. Many perks become more valuable for people who can use them frequently. Benefits include:

• First checked bag free (up to $70 per person on a round-trip Delta flight)

• Zone 5 priority boarding

• Complimentary upgrade list

• Up to $120 credit every 4 years for Global Entry or up to $85 every 4.5 years for TSA PreCheck®

• Complimentary Hertz Five-Star status

• 20 percent savings on eligible in-flight purchases (as a statement credit)

• 15 percent savings on award travel on Delta flights (not applicable to partner-operated flights or to taxes and fees)

• Trip-delay insurance (up to $300 per trip, two claims per eligible card annually, for eligible delays)*

• Baggage insurance (up to $1,250 for carry-on, $500 for checked luggage)

• Car rental loss and damage insurance**

The Delta Business Platinum also offers a standard set of business-centric tools and benefits to make organizing your business expenses easy, such as: 

• Extended buying power

• Purchase protection

• Extended warranty

• Free employee cards

• Expense management tools

• Vendor pay by Bill.com 

The American Express® Business Gold Card provides outstanding flexible bonus category coverage for business expenses in a variety of categories. You’ll automatically earn top rewards rates in your two highest spending categories from a choice of six categories. Make sure to spend in categories that the Delta Platinum doesn’t earn bonuses in to maximize your rewards, like restaurants and transit. You’ll also have the ability to book airfare through the Amex travel portal if you need to fly outside the SkyTeam alliance partners.

The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express provides an excellent no-annual-fee option for earning flat reward rates on any purchase. The best way to pair this with the Delta SkyMiles Platinum is to use it for any non-travel purchases, ensuring you’ll always earn a minimum of 2X points (up to $50,000 in annual spending, then 1X).

Delta is part of the SkyTeam airline alliance, featuring the following partners:

• Aerolineas Argentinas

• Aeromexico

• Air Europa

• Air France

• China Airlines

• China Eastern

• Garuda Indonesia

• Kenya Airways

• KLM

• Korean Air

• Middle East Airlines

• SAS

• Saudia

• TAROM

• Vietnam Airlines

• Virgin Atlantic

• XiamenAir

American Express Membership Rewards are the only flexible currency with Delta as a travel partner. Also note that there is an excise tax of $0.0006 per point (maximum $99) for point transfers. You can cover this cost with Membership Rewards, but you will get poor value using your points to cover this tax.

While you can’t transfer your Delta SkyMiles to a different program, you can transfer them to another member for a $30 fee plus $0.01 per mile. You can transfer a minimum of 1,000 miles and a maximum of 30,000 miles per transaction in increments of 1,000. The maximum you can transfer per calendar year is 150,000 miles, and the maximum you can receive per calendar year is 300,000 miles.

The best business cards offer rewards in key business spending categories, so a primary factor in a business card’s rating is its rewards value. This includes the card’s average rewards rate, estimated annual rewards earnings, sign-up bonus value and reward redemption value.

To estimate a business card’s average annual rewards earnings, we first calculate its average rewards rate based on how much it earns in different bonus categories and how closely its categories align with the average small-business owner’s spending habits. In other words, we assess whether the card earns rewards at a high rate in the most popular business spending categories. 

We researched 10 key business spending categories including dining, gas, office supplies, travel, telecommunications, insurance and more to get a sense of the average small-business owner’s spending habits. We assumed an average annual spend of around $40,000 per year based on Bankrate survey data. 

Using this data, we are able to assign a weighting to each of a card’s bonus categories. We also estimate the redemption value of points or miles from various issuer, airline and hotel rewards programs.

This weighting and rewards valuation allows us to estimate a card’s average annual rewards earnings — how many points or miles you’d earn with a given card if your spending was about average and you used the card for all of your business purchases — as well as what those points are worth. We also use point valuations to determine a card’s sign-up bonus value.

With these calculations complete, we assign each card a score based on how its average rewards earnings, sign-up bonus value, rewards rate and redemption value stack up against other business cards, factoring in the card’s annual fee.

The better these values, the higher its score will be, making it more worthy of inclusion in our list and increasing its potential ranking.

We also score business cards based on how much it costs to keep them in your wallet or carry a balance. 

To start, each business card is scored based on whether it offers an intro APR and how its ongoing APR compares to the rates available on other business cards. This is because an intro APR on new purchases or balance transfers can be a lifesaver if you need to pay down debt, finance a large business purchase or free up cash flow. 

While intro APRs are not uncommon on business cards, they aren’t a given, so cards that offer this sort of payment flexibility will score higher in our card rating system.

Even more important to both a card’s score and its inclusion in our list, however, is how its annual fee influences its overall value. We consider a card’s annual fee in two ways — how it ranks relative to the fees you’ll find on other cards in the category and how it impacts a card’s overall rewards value. 

Cards with an annual fee will always be at a slight disadvantage in our scoring system since annual fees inherently cut into your rewards value. However, if a card offers terrific value via its ongoing rewards and perks, it can earn a high score and a spot in our list even if it carries a high annual fee.  

With this in mind, we rate a card based primarily on how its ongoing rewards value and ongoing perk value (such as annual credits or bonuses) stack up against those of other cards in the category when you subtract annual fees.

We rate each business card’s flexibility based on the restrictions it imposes on earning and redeeming rewards. 

Flexibility factors include whether a card only allows you to earn a high rewards rate on only a small amount of spending or requires you to meet a certain earning threshold before you can redeem rewards. We also examine whether your points are worth less when you opt for some redemption options over others and whether a card gives you the flexibility to transfer rewards to travel partners. 

We also score each card’s set of features – its perks and benefits — against five tiers of features to provide a rating. Top-tier perks include benefits like airport lounge access, travel credits, elite status with an airline or hotel and credits for expedited security screening membership programs.

 We give extra weight to perks especially useful or valuable for small-business owners, like being able to qualify with no personal guarantee, digital advertising credits, free employee cards and accounting perks.