Rakuten — $100 Sign-Up Bonus (2026 Review)

Amex has worked this way since around 2014, and closing the card does not reset it. The restriction is enforced through wording in the offer terms, along the lines of not being eligible if you have or have had the card. A widely repeated belief that the block quietly lapses after about seven years is not something Amex states anywhere, so treat that as folklore rather than policy. Business cards are generally a separate pool from personal ones.

The Membership Rewards group covers Platinum, Gold and Green, and the Green Card terms say you may not be eligible if you have or have had the Green, the Platinum or the Gold, or previous versions of those cards. Hilton groups the Hilton, Surpass and Aspire cards. Marriott groups Bevy and Brilliant. Delta groups Blue, Gold, Platinum and Reserve. Personal and business cards sit in separate families, so a business version does not usually spend your personal eligibility.

A notice can appear mid-application saying you are not eligible for the advertised welcome offer, usually because you have held that card before. It shows up before the credit check, so you can abandon the application at that point with no hard pull and no score impact. If no notice appears, that is generally read as a sign you are eligible, though it is not a written guarantee.

Community-observed rather than published by Amex. Personal and business credit cards share the same count for both windows. Charge cards with no preset spending limit, meaning Platinum, Gold, Green and their business versions, are generally treated as outside both counts, which is why a charge card sometimes goes through when a credit card application would not.

Amex's own referral terms state that you can earn a referral bonus up to a maximum of five times per card account per calendar year. This replaced an older cap counted in points rather than in referrals. The limit is per card product, so someone holding two different Amex cards has a separate five on each card's referral link. Counters reset when the change took effect, regardless of what had already been earned that year. The business card referral terms were not separately checked in this pass.

No lifetime language, usually shortened to NLL, is community shorthand rather than an Amex term. It describes an offer whose fine print omits the usual clause about having or having had the card. Because the once per lifetime rule is enforced through that exact wording, its absence can mean a repeat bonus is possible, but nothing guarantees it. These offers appear as targeted mailers and account pop-ups, sometimes as links passed around publicly, and they come and go.