Amex Business Platinum vs Loop

For a long time, the Business Platinum Card from American Express has been the status symbol of Canadian business credit cards. It promises airport lounges, hotel status, a hefty welcome bonus and that heavy metal card feel.

• In Canada, Amex Business Platinum has:
  • A $799 annual fee
  • A 2.5% foreign transaction fee on non-CAD purchases
  • Higher market rate even if foreign transaction fee is waived
  • Plaza Premium and Priority Pass lounge access that, from January 1, 2027, will be capped at a limited number of visits per year unless the account spends at least $20,000 annually to unlock unlimited access again
• For companies with heavy USD SaaS, international ad spend, or foreign suppliers, these fees become a real drag on margin.
  • It’s also worth mentioning that the Amex USD Platinum Card will no longer be available for Canadian businesses in 3 months
• Loop is designed to close that gap with:
  • No annual card fees
  • No FX fees when you spend and settle in CAD, USD, EUR or GBP
  • Minimal markup on other currencies
  • A true corporate card structure where activity never touches founders’ personal credit reports

This article walks through how Amex Business Platinum really works for Canadian businesses, what changes when you move spend to Loop, and why more finance teams are starting to treat Amex as a niche travel perk rather than their default payment rail.
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Amex Business Platinum in Canada: the headline vs. the fine print

On paper, Business Platinum looks like a premium all-rounder. The card charges $799 per year for the primary cardholder and $250 per year for each additional Business Platinum employee card. It earns 1.25 Membership Rewards points per $1 in purchases and unlocks the American Express Global Lounge Collection, a suite of travel credits and various hotel benefits.

The catch is how Business Platinum treats non-CAD spend:

• It charges a 2.5% foreign transaction fee on purchases made in a foreign currency, on top of the underlying FX rate.
• One of its biggest perceived perks (unlimited lounge access) is changing in Canada starting in 2027.
• From 2027 onward, Business Platinum and other Platinum products will only include a limited number of complimentary Plaza Premium and Priority Pass visits per year.
• Unlimited lounge access will be reserved for accounts that meet a $20,000 annual spend threshold.

If you have a company with moderate travel but heavy international vendor spend, that means you are paying a high fixed fee and a high FX tax for perks your finance team may barely use.
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What a 2.5% foreign transaction fee really costs

A foreign transaction fee is simple on the surface: most Canadian credit cards add around 2.5% to any purchase made in a currency other than CAD or processed through a foreign bank. For every $1,000 you spend, $25 disappears in fees before you even look at the FX rate itself. Many issuers also bake additional spread into their conversion rates, pulling the true cost closer to 3–4% once everything is accounted for.

Example: $1,000,000/year in non-CAD spend on Amex Business Platinum (Canada)

When it still makes sense to keep Amex

None of this means Amex Platinum is useless. There are still narrow scenarios where it can be worth keeping in your stack.

Amex can still make sense if:

• Your executive team travels constantly and fully uses lounges, hotel status, and airline perks

But those are edge cases. They are about optimizing personal or executive travel, not about running your company’s entire global payables stack.

For most Canadian SMEs, a more rational setup is to keep Amex as a niche travel or perks card for a small group of users, and move the bulk of operational spend to Loop (SaaS subscriptions, ad platforms, vendors, contractors, and team cards) so that day-to-day spend sits on a low-FX corporate card instead.
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Is it time to move your spend?

If you are a Canadian business with meaningful non-CAD spend and real growth plans, it rarely makes sense to keep running that volume through a 2.5% FX card. Moving fixed and recurring foreign expenses like USD SaaS, ad budgets, vendors and contractors onto a low-FX corporate card such as Loop lets you turn a hidden tax into predictable savings, keep founders’ personal credit out of the equation, and build your business credit profile instead. In most cases, Amex is best kept for select travel and perks, while Loop becomes the default rail for day-to-day global spend.

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