American Express’ new Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card
An image of the newly announced American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card. Taken directly from americanexpress.com
On March 25th, 2026, American Express announced a new business credit card: the Graphite Business Cash Unlimited. In this blog post, we will summarize everything that’s new to quickly get you up to speed.
Overview
The Graphite Business Cash Unlimited is a cash back business-focused card, and does not reward with Membership Rewards points. These days, cash-back credit cards are becoming increasingly popular since cash outweighs points/miles at face value.
Annual Fee & Rewards
The card comes in with a slightly heavy $295 annual fee.
2% unlimited cash back (does not apply to fees, interest, traveler’s checks, prepaid cards, gift cards, peer-to-peer payments, or transactions at point-of-sale covered either partially or entirely by Reward Dollars). More on ‘Reward Dollars’ later.
5% cash back on flights and prepaid hotels through the Amex Travel portal (anything booked outside of the travel portal will not count).
Benefits / Bonuses
A $1,500 ‘Reward Dollars’ bonus if you spend $50,000 in purchases within the first 6 months of having the card.
No Preset Spending Limit — Unlike a traditional credit card, there is no card limit… sort of. Depending on your credit, you will still have a cap on how big of a purchase you can make at a time.
You can choose to pay a large purchase over time, but anything else that is not requested as a ‘Pay Over Time’ purchase must be paid in full every month.
Employee Cards — $95 yearly for the first 5, and then $95 yearly for each one thereafter. There are free card options available. You can have up to 99 additional cards.
Virtual Cards — The ability to create virtual cards to better protect your physical card data.
A $2,400 American Express One AP (a B2B payment platform) statement credit for the following calendar year if you spend $250,000 or more on eligible purchases.
No foreign transaction fees
Purchase Protection (up to $1,000 per purchase, up to $50,000 per year)
Return Protection (up to $300 per item, up to $1,000 per year)
Car Rental Loss & Damage Insurance — If the entire rental purchase is made with the card and 3rd party insurance is declined.
Warranty Extension — Extends the manufacturer warranty by up to 1 additional year; only applies to warranties under 5 years, and there are exclusions.
What we like!
Unlimited 2% cash back on most purchases is like having a 2x points/miles multiplier on a travel card. It’s essentially like getting a 2% discount on everything you buy; with exceptions of course. This is an upgrade from the Blue Business Cash card, which caps its 2% cash back at $50,000 per year.
Although it’s not a true travel card that offers transferable points, this card can be used abroad with its no foreign transaction fees. The car rental protections, Purchase Protections, and Return Protections are nice to have as well.
What we don’t like…
I’m not a fan of the subtle exclusions and conditions. I understand that maybe American Express is attempting to reduce abuse of the cash-back system, but the fact that a lot of the conditions have to be dug out of the fine print makes it feel a bit dishonest.
‘Reward Dollars’ is NOT true cash!
American Express uses the term "Reward Dollars" a lot on the landing page. It turns out that the cash back received with this card can seemingly only be applied as statement credit, or as Amazon credit, not as liquid cash. Not sure if this indicates that all of American Express’ cash-back cards will all eventually go this route, but it seems a bit misleading to say ‘cash’, yet only allow statement credits or Amazon credit.
Who is this card actually for?
Upon seeing the conditions needed to reach the bonus credits ($50,000 of spend within 6 months / $250,000 of spend within a calendar year), I was immediately able to see this card being used by medium to large businesses who spend at least $100,000 per year in overhead and materials.
It would be difficult for a small business with small spend to truly benefit from having this card. To break even with the $295 annual fee, you’d need to spend almost $15,000 per year. To avoid the fee altogether, though, a small business is better off getting either the Amex Blue Business Cash or the Amex Blue Business Plus card, both of which have no annual fees.
Concluding Thoughts & Predictions
Up until now, the Blue Business Cash was the only business cash-back card offered, meaning that larger businesses were either handicapped by its $50,000 cap, or were forced to get one of the higher-end business charge cards, like the Business Gold or Business Platinum. This middle-ground card allows larger businesses to benefit from the rewards with less limitations.
I suspect that in the near future, American Express might announce a new Graphite Business Plus card, with all the same benefits as this one, but with Membership Rewards instead of cash back (or ‘Reward Dollars’).
Amex announces new products, benefits and changes for 2026
Amid the new card announcement, American Express announced via this Instagram post that in 2026, there is new stuff in the works:
Faster application & onboarding for businesses ‘coming this spring’
A unified card / expense interface ‘coming this fall’
Amex expense AI app for businesses ‘coming soon’
A $300 ChatGPT credit for the Business Gold and Business Platinum cards ‘coming soon’
It will be exciting to see what rolls out as the year progresses.
