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American Express recently launched a massive new Platinum Card sign up bonus.

If you sign up by 25th October 2022 using this link here, you will receive 65,000 Membership Rewards points + a £200 Amex Travel credit when you spend £6,000 within the first 6 months of card-membership.

Remember that if you already have a personal Membership Rewards points earning card (eg. Amex Gold), or have had one in the last 24 months, you will not be eligible for the sign up bonus. 

This is a genuinely huge bonus that far outweighs the £575 annual fee (without even taking into account the excellent travel benefits of having an Amex Platinum!) as you can see below:

1. 65,000 Membership Rewards points are worth about £650. You have the option of transferring to British Airways Avios or many other airline and hotel partners at compelling rates.
2. Even if you just redeem the points (via Avios and Nectar) to buy things at Sainsbury’s, Argos or eBay, you will receive 0.8p of value per point. 65,000 points is therefore worth a minimum of £520.
3. The £200 travel credit isn’t quite as useful as cash, because you would be limited to booking through Amex Travel, but it should be easy to get ~£180 of ‘real’ value from it.
4. Add those together and you are looking at a sign up bonus worth at least £700!
5. Finally, you can get a pro rata refund of the annual fee. For example, if you cancelled your card after 6 months, you would receive a refund for the other 6 months, meaning you would only end up paying a total of ~£287.50.

The Platinum Card is now a credit card rather than a charge card, but if you pay your balance off in full every month anyway, that shouldn’t really make much of a difference.

In addition to the sign up bonus, it is also worth quickly mentioning that the Amex Platinum offers the following annual benefits too:

• £100 (2 x £50) free spend at Harvey Nichols
• £150 UK restaurant credit (at selected restaurants)
• £150 international restaurant credit (at selected restaurant)
• £10 per month Addison Lee taxi credit
• Priority Pass Airport Lounge access for cardholder + 1 guest
• Eurostar Lounge Access
• Travel insurance for cardholder + family
• Gold status with Hilton Honors, Marriott Bonvoy, Radisson Rewards and Melia Rewards

You can also get one free supplementary card, which provides benefits like lounge access, hotel programme status and travel insurance to the supplementary cardholder too.

Bottom line

Even without the sign up bonus, if you are able to make full use of all the various credits and travel benefits offered by the Amex Platinum, it is quite easy to justify paying the annual fee. Many cardholders end up keeping it for years once they get used to the benefits.

If you are eligible for the sign up bonus though, now is the perfect time to give it a try. If you decide after a few months that you aren’t getting enough out of it, simply cancel for a pro rata refund.