Amex Platinum: £450 welcome offer + £100

Extra cashback and insurance on top could be worth another £600

For a short time, the welcome bonus has an extra bonus on the American Express Platinum credit card. But watch out for the massive annual fee.

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What is the American Express Platinum card

The Amex Platinum card is a point earning card that comes with extras like free travel insurance and credit to spend each year on eating out (£350 over the next 9 months) and at Harvey Nicholls (£50 that resets in January). However it comes with a hefty £650 annual fee.

You’ll earn one Amex Membership Reward point for every £1 you spend with the card. That’s either the equivalent of 0.5% back if you swap your points for gift card (a rate that can be easily beaten.)

You can read more about the card and it’s benefits in our full Amex Platinum review.

Who can get the welcome offer

Unlike with other Amex cards, you might be able to get this bonus if you’ve already got an Amex or had one in the last two years.

The only cards that will rule you out are the Preferred Rewards Gold card and the Rewards card. Here’s more on which cards will still make you eligible for this offer.

Standard Amex Platinum welcome offer

Standard: earn 50,000 points

New cardholders can get 50,000 Amex Reward points if they spend £6,000 in the first three months of having the card. That’s worth £280 in gift vouchers or as Nectar points. Or you can swap them for different airline points. I’ve rounded up all Amex Reward redemption options here)

As with other American Express cards, my tip is to wait for heavily increased welcome offers before applying.

Card	Reward type	Normal bonus
American Express Platinum credit card	Membership Rewards Points	50,000 points

Boosted Amex Platinum welcome offer

This latest new user offer could add up to £550 of freebies.

Boosted: earn 80,000 bonus points

This offer, running from 6 November 2024 to 14 January 2025 adds an extra 30,000 points to the total available, so you’ll get 80,000 as a welcome bonus.

To trigger the bonus you will need to spend an increased £10,000, though you’ll have longer than normal to do this, at six months. This spending will earn you another 10,000 points and a combined total of 90,000 points, worth £450.

Extra £100 cashback / referral

There’s currently also £100 cashback available if you go via cashback site Quidco, or a lower £50 via TopCashback (it’s always worth checking both as the rates change). This £100 is guaranteed once you’re accepted for the card and isn’t dependent on any spending.

Or, if you get referred by a friend you’ll get a total of 100,000 points as a bonus when you spend the full £10,000 in six months. Those extra 20,000 points are worth £100 as well, which means you’ll get the same amount this way as Quidco, though your friend will also get a kickback.

Added on to the bonus and spending points, either of these give you a total of £550. You can’t combine the cashback site and referral link.

The fee and extra offers

However, once you deduct the £650 fee, you’ll be down £100. That doesn’t sound exciting, but it means you won’t be paying for all the additional offers that come with the Platinum card.

Over the next nine months you’ll be able to claim offers worth £400:

• £150 UK restaurant credit in 2024
• 2 x £100 UK restaurant credit in 2025
• 2 x £50 Harvey Nicholls credit

Then there are other perks to factor in on top. The insurance could be worth £150 to £200, if not more, while the airport lounge passes would cost £200 to £400 – though of course you might not need those.

• Annual travel insurance
• Airport lounge access

So overall, the £550 from the welcome deal, £450 from credit offers and £150 saving on travel insurance would total £1,150 – so you’ll still make a profit from this boosted offer and other deals, making it worth a look.

Also, at some point, Amex has plans to stop pro-rata refunds of the annual fee if you cancel midway through the year. You might get lucky and trigger the offers before this happens, giving you some off the fee back. But I’d assume you’ll be paying the full amount.