Effective August 1, Amex Plat/Gold Resy credits require the restaurant to show as credit-eligible on the Resy website at the time of purchsae. Currently most do! So it’s not clear whether this is just meant to cover for establishments whose MCC codes are odd and don’t track properly (or that don’t accept Amex), or whether the intention is to cut costs and limit to specific places (that presumably contribute economic value towards the credit) a la Chase, whose restaurant credit set is highly limited. At a minimum this creates the architecture for this going forward.
Effective August 1, 2026, U.S. restaurants and other food and beverage establishments (e.g., wineries, cafes) must be indicated as eligible for the Resy Credit on the Resy website or the Resy app at the time of purchase to qualify for the benefit. Qualifying restaurants and other food and beverage establishments will be indicated as eligible on their booking page on the Resy website or the Resy app and are subject to change at any time.
San Francisco won’t be TRULY back until there are shoeshiners at SFO
— Fed (@fedpoasts) June 12, 2026
I’m guessing that this is a way to stop the gift card purchase through those restaurants, requiring the purchase to be tied to an actual Rest reservation.
The way it works now is you can just buy the gift cards online as long as it goes through Toast at a Resy location..Or you can order takeout.
Financially it shouldn’t matter but they want to make it harder to use. This will increase “breakage” and make those cards less valuable to customers. Kind of like the doordash credits on the CSR.
It’s possible it’s just from the integration of Tock. Or it’s possible that they will require restaurants to pay for a portion of the credit and a meaningful number of restaurants will no longer be available for the credit.
But even if that becomes the case, this is a rational business move by Amex that may actually lead to the long-term viability of this credit. They started with the broadest possible subset (all Resy restaurants). After a period of time, they then tell restaurants that X number of people that ate at their restaurant used the credit, and do you want to risk losing that business? Or pay us $$ and we’ll continue to list you as a restaurant that accepts the credit and because we are customer-friendly we are of course going to prioritize restaurants that accept the credit in the search results.
Compare that to the CSR which started with (and still basically has) a small handful of restaurants in select major cities that are already seeing turnover.
So… I suspect that the ease of use of these credits as between Amex and Chase will still be night and day in favor of Amex. Some may say they are still “nerfing” the benefit, but all benefits don’t grow to the sky, and if they can maintain a benefit that is still usable at thousands of restaurants, that’s still excellent. Even if it was just the Global Dining Collection restaurants it would still be tons more restaurants than Chase has.
I did see one comment online (obviously not sure if true or not) that some Resy restaurants were not accepting Amex cards. I find that odd since Resy is owned by Amex and you would assume a condition of being listed on the site was acceptance of Amex cards. If there are such restaurants I would think Amex would immediately just drop them. Not sure what other considerations qualify for this restriction. It will be interesting as of August 1 to see what indication is on the Resy app or website to identify qualifying restaurants.
Personally I’ll probably use the third quarter benefit in July just in case some of my favorites aren’t included after August 1. Similary, I will use the CSR 2nd half year credit in July as there are only a handful of restaurants listed in Charlotte but some I go to often so the credit works for me at full value. However, with the limited offerings I’m more concerned that my favorites are no longer eligible for the CSR credit than I am about any restrictions on Resy. There are so many Resy restaurants I’m sure I can find something I like that qualifies.