Update: Today is the big day. Don’t forget to register your cards before you make purchases. You can register here or by calling 1-866-515-4134 – Press 1. ———————————————-

For the past 4 years American Express has been running a Small Business Saturday promo, where Amex cardholders would receive $25 statement credits on purchases made with their American Express cards at registered small businesses. This year the promo has returned, though this year instead of $25, the credit will only be $10. This years SBS will be taking place on November 30.

To get the $10 credit, you will need to spend $10 or more in a single in-store transaction at a qualifying small business that appears on the Small Business Saturday Map. Online transactions do not qualify.

To take part in this promo you will need to register your AMEX credit cards. You will be able to register your American Express Cards at www.shopsmall.com at 12:00 A.M. MST (Mountain Standard Time) on 11/24/13 until 11:59 P.M. MST on 11/30/13, unless the registration limit is reached sooner. Registration is limited.

In the past years all AMEX credit cards worked for  this promotion – even from 3rd party issuers, such as the no annual fee Travelocity American Express Credit card which is issued by Barclays bank. However, if for whatever reason you do not get credit automatically, unlike with cards issued direct by American Express, where getting the credit issued manually is as simple as a phone call or sending a Secure Message, with a 3rd party issued card it will be extremely difficult.

This year also, the FREE AMEX Serve is included in in this promo. So even if you do not have any American Express credit cards, or have bad credit and can’t get approved for an American Express credit card, you can still take advantage of this promotion as the Amex Serve is open to anyone (good or bad credit) and there is no credit pull when applying.

Additionally, This promo works with primary and secondary user cards issued directly from AMEX (where the account numbers are all different), but not with secondary cards from 3rd party issuers like Barclays etc;. Of course each card must be registered separately but you are able to use the same email address. With American Express cards you can add up-to 99 additional user cards, though it is not recommended as adding too many user cards is a risk of getting a “Financial Review” where AMEX suspends your account until you provide your tax documents. Also, even if you are only planning on adding a few such as 5 or more additional user cards, it is recommended to space them out. When adding additional user cards, AMEX asks for the users social security number. You can just say you don’t have it off hand, and you can ignore the requests you will get for that in the mail.

Bottom line: It’s worth it to add some additional users to your AMEX accounts, as each additional user cards will be another free $10, (and it will help you cover the annual fee on your card) but it’s not worth it to over do it, unless you are okay with a “financial Review”. Also, it may be worth is to sign up for the free AMEX Serve as there will be no credit pull or anything, and you’ll even get a free $50. To get the FREE $50 you’ll need to make 2 direct deposits of $250 each, which is extremely simple, as Amazon Payments or PayPal will work just fine for this. Additionally, with Serve, you can add up-to $1,000 from your credit card per month which in turn equals free miles/points. That’s 12,000 FREE miles/points a year!