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American Express shared some incredible data during its second quarter earnings call. The American Express Platinum Card® see rates and fees is working, perhaps better than Amex expected. It is now their fastest-growing U.S. consumer card and it was the largest driver of their 11.4% U.S. consumer spending increase.
Last year’s card refresh is reportedly producing:
- Higher spending by existing cardmembers.
- Significant new account growth.
- Upgrades to Platinum from other Amex products.
- Extremely high retention despite the $200 fee increase.
- More travel and dining engagement.
Approximately one-quarter of U.S. Platinum accounts had received the $200 annaul fee increase from $695 to $895. Retention was flat year-over-year despite the fee increase and they describe that as “through the roof.”
And Amex is highlighting for investors the growth in annual fee revenue they expect to see as the increased card costs rolls out to more customers. They’re calling the product their largest and fastest-growing U.S. card and the largest contributor to the acceleration in U.S. consumer spending, growing about 600 basis points following the refresh.
Revenue at Amex is growing significantly, but earnings are not, and they took this objection head on. They can either have more earnings now or invest in the business with more card acquisition, doubling down on technology and integrating TheFork into their dining ecosystem which helps drive card adoption and spending and new agentic commerce initiatives. They think these will drive even more profit in the future.
The current American Express Platinum Card® initial bonus offer is as high as 175,000 Membership Rewards points after $12,000 spend on eligible purchases on the card within the first 6 months. (They vary the offers, and not everyone is eligible.) That’s expensive, at a penny a point that would be $1,750 just in the bonus as part of their acquisition cost.
They’re spending heavily and not just on bonuses. Total Amex expenses rose 12% against 10% revenue growth. Cardmember rewards were up 9% which is what you’d expect along with similar growth in spend. However ‘cardmember services’ were up a whopping 50% driven by new Platinum credits, services and benefit usage.
While many of the credits are funded by their partners, that doesn’t come close to covering all of the cost. And remember that they own Resy, that rebate comes from their own pockets. Here are the details of just some of the American Express Platinum Card® credits totaling $1,919 – this isn’t the full list, and doesn’t include hotel status (Marriott, Hilton) or rentla car status let alone lounge access.
$200 Uber Cash + $120 Uber One Credit With the Platinum Card® you can receive $15 in Uber Cash each month plus a bonus $20 in December when you add your Platinum Card® to your Uber account to use on rides and orders in the U.S when you select an Amex Card for your transaction. Plus, when you use the Platinum Card® to pay for an auto-renewing Uber One membership, you can get up to $120 in statement credits each calendar year. Terms apply.
$300 Digital Entertainment Credit: Experience the latest shows, news and recipes. Get up to $25 in statement credits each month when you use your Platinum Card® for eligible purchases on Disney+, a Disney+ bundle, ESPN streaming services, Hulu, The New York Times, Paramount+, Peacock, The Wall Street Journal, YouTube Premium, and YouTube TV when you purchase directly from one or more of the providers. Enrollment required.
$600 Hotel Credit: Get up to $300 in statement credits semi-annually on prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts® or The Hotel Collection* bookings through American Express Travel® using the Platinum Card®. *The Hotel Collection requires a minimum two-night stay.
$400 Resy Credit + Platinum Nights™ by Resy: Get up to $100 in statement credits each quarter when you use the Platinum Card® to pay for eligible purchases with Resy, including dining purchases at over 10,000 qualifying U.S. Resy restaurants. Enrollment required. As a Platinum Card® Member you have special access to reservations on select nights at participating sought after Resy restaurants in select cities through Platinum Nights™ by Resy. Simply add your Platinum Card® to your Resy profile to book your reservation.
$219 CLEAR+ Credit: CLEAR+ helps get you to your gate faster by using your face to verify you are you at 55+ airports nationwide. You can cover the cost of a CLEAR+ Membership* with up to $219 in statement credits per calendar year after you pay for CLEAR+ with your Platinum Card®. *Excluding any applicable taxes and fees. Subject to auto-renewal.
$200 Airline Fee Credit: Select one qualifying airline and then receive up to $200 in statement credits per calendar year when incidental fees, such as checked bags and in-flight refreshments, are charged by the airline to the Platinum Card® Account. American Express relies on airlines to submit the correct information on airline transactions to identify incidental fee purchases. If you do not see a credit for a qualifying incidental purchase on your eligible Card after 8 weeks, simply call the number on the back of your Card. Qualifying airlines are subject to change. See terms & conditions for more details.
So you can see how it’s possible to bribe customers with thousands of dollars to pay an $895 annual fee. I get multiples of the annual fee back in statement credits, so it’s earning a profit and accessing Centurion lounges, at least if you don’t factor the time and brain space needed to take advantage of the benefits.
Nonetheless, in addition to not actually growing earnings right away, investment analysts had questions around whether cardmembers would cancel as the new higher annual fee hits their account (though this hasn’t seemed to happen yet), whether Amex will have to keep refresh products and increasing benefits in order to sustain growth (probably, and remember that merchant-funded offers come and go as the partners achieve their objectives or decide it’s no longer worth funding). And there are questions around the return on Resy and Tock.
Amex doesn’t view those as investments that are supposed to be profitbale in their own right, which is good, because giving cardmembers $400 a year to spend on Resy is almost insane and hard to imagine it’s sustainable. It keeps money in their ecosystem but in some sense what they’ve proven with Platinum is that you can give customers money and they’ll take your card.
Spending growth at Resy restaurants was roughly twice the overall restaurant rate, and Amex says its cardmembers have higher restaurant checks than non-cardmembers. Give customers money to spend at specific restaurants and they will spend money at those specific restaurants.
The real trick here seems to be that people seem to be getting the card and using it for other things – when the correct strategy is to use it for airfare purchases at 5 points per dollar, and use it where you’re earning statement credits, but little else because it makes absolutely no sense to earn just 1 point per dollar on your spending.
Some other things I found interesting:
- Amex had the best spending growth in three years. There’s no slowdown in premium customer spend.
- 75% of their new accounts are on annual fee-paying products. That’s the highest share they’ve achieved in recent years.
- They added 3 million new cards during the quarter (not necessarily 3 million unique new customers).
- Amex assumes very little points breakage, with a redemption rate of ~ 96%. They did revise this down slightly but not enough to change the rounded rate, which suggests they goosed earnings a bit this quarter but they say it iwll be de minimis for the full year.
- About 10% of U.S. cardmembers now have an Amex deposit account. Consumer and small-business deposit balances rose 9%, and roughly 60% of consumer deposit accounts belong to Millennials or Gen Z. They’re trying to turn the card relationship into a broader banking relationship.
As a reward for reading to the end, here are 23 Amex Platinum Insider Tips: Hidden Credits, Enrollment Traps, And Benefits Most Cardmembers Miss.
For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.
. . . and they continue to cut the value of their only real concrete benefit – their MR points which are now worth ~20%-25% less than other card’s points when transferring to Emirates, Cathay Pacific, etc. The phony value in Amex Platinum has just gotten more phony, but the real story is how even the value of the points themselves have been debased. I was looking at an award today on Emirates that was 99K Capital One points, or ~125K EK points.
Thank you, Amex, for all that Resy and Lululemon mon-mons. Not pleased with losing the United Travel Bank airline incidental fee reimbursement angle, but whatevs. And, looking forward to the new Centurion at EWR Terminal A, if you can actually pull it off in 2026.
Ah. My accountant just reconciled our merchant account fees for the 1st 6 months of 2026; this explains why our Amex averages about 5.3% versus 3.1% for Visa. While our initial charge is about 2.9-3.6% on the base, we get nailed 30 to 60 days later with an affinity fee from Amex.
I find value in the AMEX Platinum card, but as you say, I only use it when there is an incentive, such as 5x airfare, using the various credits at Resy, Lululemon, and Saks (formerly but no more). Otherwise, I use the card very little as it makes no sense to acquire AMEX points.
Gary, have you run a billion dollar company? Umm.. neither have I. But I did run one with a couple hundred employees and we ‘gave’ away free subscriptions to.various tech products, and even though customer surveys say that 80% would use them, only about 20% did. That’s where I think you are an outlier. You expect to take as much as you can, and in reality only a small percentage of customers actually do all of the leg work because it simply isn’t worth it to them? (Or they are are stupid… More likely they don’t have enough time like you do? ;). )
Not only is the card not profitable, it’s not even as “successful” as the smoke the execs blow at the investors/the board. Time will tell if having this card leads to ppl carrying/financing balances…and Banking relations where customers take out loans, etc
Now that it’s been about a year, Amex is going to have to give out retention offers on this card for many ppl to keep it.
@haolenate — Is that because of Panama? I read local BAC Credomatic basically has a monopoly, causing your merchants to pay 2-3x US-based.
@ Gary — I think AMEX was smart to increase the FHR credits to 2x per year. Between that and the Bilt HAFH and Chase THE EDIT credits, I am now trained to always think about using these hotel credits when booking. Just 18 months ago when we just had a single FHR to use per AMEX Plat card, it was sort of an annoyance, and I didn’t study the program very deeply.
Until a few months ago, the card seemed overly generous since you could easily use the $200 airline fee credit, but now not as much. I suspect AMEX will continue to chip away at the value over time.
Think its a lot to do with other premium travel card introductions or refreshes usually sucking. The CSR and Citi Strata Elite have outright sucked.
But Amex has been chipping away at its advantage little by little to a point where the Amex biz Plat makes very little sense and the Amex Personal Plat slowing getting to the ‘should i hold onto it ‘category.
This one is tricky to call because, in America these days, you don’t make money offering a good product at a fair value. Rather, you make money convincing people to pay for something “special” that isn’t objectively worth it. So it’s a human psychology game, and that’s hard to predict. As you note, it’s rarely a good idea to put spend on an AMEX Platinum card. Logically, that would seem to be a big problem for AMEX. Is it? I’m not sure. I believe, as I’m sure AMEX believes, many cardholders will do it irrationally. The coupon book game is trickier. Like I dutifully look every quarter for a Resy restaurant to spend my $100 credit. I don’t run up a huge tab there, and I forget about Rezy until the next quarter. I suspect the vast majority of cardholders do the same. So they’ll have to tinker with that game. Meanwhile, their signature product, the airport lounges, is now problematic. Like I’ve recently abandoned efforts in both NYC and and Tokyo to get into the lounges because they were too crowded and had long wait times. My suspicion is that would be a deal killer for most cardholders because they got the card to “be treated special,” and it proved to be a mirage.
I’ve had the platinum card for 20 years. Personally, I find value in the Resy credit, the FHR credit and, from time to time, Priority Pass. For me those benefits are enough to justify the cost. However, the Centurion Lounge is no longer a benefit I enjoy as waiting an hour to enter has lost its charm. Further the FHR program is getting increasingly complicated with much higher rates for those that are cancelable – turns out that the free breakfast ain’t so free anymore. I think my feedback to the Amex execs would be this: Back when the card was $395 or $495, I was not focused on extracting the full value of the card. I didn’t care. At $895, I do care and my loyalty is increasingly thin.
My main complaint about the Amex Platinum is the “Amex Offers & Benefits” section. It used to be offers of points.
(1) I used to comb it carefully and shop at the stores that gave good points. Sometimes that made me a permanent of those stores. I see great value in having a large stash of Amex points to transfer to airlines or hotels.
(2) Now most of the offers are nearly useless cash backs offers. It is not worth my time to check on them and I do not bother. Mega downgrade.
Enough said.
@1990 – no, that’s all US driven. We’re still an American company 🙂 I just am setting up life in Panama for retirement, but doing it now (well, 15 years early…). Merchant accounts down here are much more strict and charge a bit more than they do in the US, and payouts are weekly not daily.
Under Panamanian law, I’d need to hire a full time employee here to do business, so its all remote.
@CB COOPER lll When a company is engaged in extending credit, it might seem profitable in the short term, but only until it’s fully realized how many people actually pay back their loans in the long term. Auditors make arbitrary decisions about loan loss reserves to make their customers – the Officers of the companies they audit – happy, and make shareholders feel happy, but sometimes it turns out that those estimates are not realistic and the company that seems profitable has really been picking up pennies in front of a steam roller and gets creamed when low estimated loan losses turn into real high loan losses. I suspect that the average person who holds a Platinum Card today, and is willing to go through the gymnastics of making it pay, is not nearly as good a credit as Amex or its auditors have estimated. Time will tell, but higher loan losses by only 25 basis points over the estimates will make the costs of fulfilling these benefits look like chopped liver. Personally, I’m in Amex MR burn mode before they start reducing even more transfer partners below 1:1.
@haolenate — I’m happy for your personal situation. Was just trying to understand if there’s a better way to save on the high merchant fees. I see now that Amex OptBlue has some pretty strict geographic rules (basically only US domestic transactions). But, if e-commerce only, wouldn’t PayPal, Stripe, etc., blend the rates instead of charging the higher interchange fees? I guess if you have anything point-of-sale, it’s no bueno. Man, 5.3% fee is high. Now, I get why some folks overseas really hate when I present an ‘Amex.’ Sheesh!
Chase and Citi will suffer a ton of downgrades and cancellations in Q3. Amex is doing a good job of retention. Hopefully they don’t have to cut back on the most useful credits.
Did they give any hints about the Green card update?