BA Amex Accelerating Business card cut Avios earning to 1.25 per £1 on 7 October 2026

American Express has cut the everyday earn rate on the British Airways American Express Accelerating Business card. On 26 August 2026 the product page, as archived by the Wayback Machine, said: "Earn 1.5 Avios for every £1 spent on everyday purchases on your Credit Card, plus earn double On Business Points with British Airways. Please note from 7 Oct 2026, Avios earn rate is changing to 1.25 Avios for every eligible £1 spent and you will not earn On Business points." When we re-read the live page on 28 October 2026 it said only: "Earn 1.25 Avios for every £1 spent on everyday purchases on your Credit Card."

What changed

• Everyday earning fell from 1.5 to 1.25 Avios per £1, a cut of one sixth.
• On Business points, previously earned at double the normal rate on qualifying British Airways flights, are no longer mentioned on the page.
• The boosted 40,000-Avios welcome offer ended on 6 October 2026. The page now offers 30,000 bonus Avios when you spend £5,000 in the first three months, and only if you have not held an American Express business card in the previous 12 months.
• A new benefit appears: £1 of statement credit for every eligible £1 spent on hotels or car hire booked through Avios.com, up to £200 a calendar year.

What did not change

• The annual fee is £250 and the representative APR is 104.9% variable, as before.
• The tiered annual bonus is the same: 10,000 Avios for every £20,000 spent, up to three times each calendar year.
• The card is still open to sole traders and small businesses with a UK bank account, which keeps it one of the few direct Avios-earning options for sole traders.

What it means in numbers

On £30,000 a year of card spend, the old rate earned 45,000 Avios plus one 10,000-Avios bonus, 55,000 in all. At 1.25 it is 37,500 plus the same bonus, 47,500. At the ball-park value of about 1p per Avios that we use in our guide, that is roughly £75 a year less, against the same £250 fee.

For comparison, Capital on Tap converts points to Avios at 10 points to 8 Avios on the free card, so £1 of spend becomes 0.8 Avios, and 10 to 10 on Pro, which costs £299 a year. The BA card still earns more Avios per pound than either, but the gap with Pro has narrowed to a quarter of an Avios per pound, and Capital on Tap points can be taken as cash instead (1,000 points is £10). Capital on Tap is only for limited companies, LLPs and PLCs, so for sole traders the comparison does not arise.

Our Avios for business spend guide has the full worked comparison, including the annual bonus thresholds and when the fee is worth paying. If you are weighing the BA card against Capital on Tap more broadly, see Capital on Tap vs American Express.