Amex Platinum: Boosted up to 80,000 points + £100 cashback

Earn points & cashback that could be worth almost £670.

For a short time, the welcome bonus is increased 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 (£150 that resets each January) and at Harvey Nicholls (£50 that resets each January and June). 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 cards, or a slightly better 0.67% back if you convert the points into Avios points and then into Nectar points. Both these rates can be easily beaten.

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

Standard Amex Platinum welcome offer

Earn 30,000 points

New cardholders can get 30,000 Amex Reward points if they spend £4,000 in the first three months of having the card. That’s worth £150 or £200 as Nectar points (via the Avios hack).

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.

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	30,000 points

Boosted Amex Platinum welcome offer

Earn up to 80,000 points

This offer, running from 11 October 2023 to 9 January 2024 is one of the biggest Platinum welcome bonuses I’ve ever seen – it might even be the biggest full stop!

You will be able to earn up to 80,000 Amex points via a refer-a-friend link, or 75,000 if you go direct (or via a cashback site – I’ll come back to that).

To trigger the bonus you need to spend a massive £10,000 in six months, which will earn you another 10,000 points and a total of 90,000 or 85,000 points.

There’s also an extra bonus that is added on if you use the card in month 15. That’s worth 25,000 points, which would equate to £125 if swapped to a gift card, or £166.67 as Nectar via Avios.

However you’ll have triggered the £650 annual fee if you keep the card for a second year, so you’d need to be sure you’re getting value from the card’s other features to justify shelling out more than £500 to keep the card. You won’t be able to get a pro-rata refund if you cancel midway through the year as you used to thanks to new rules introduced by Amex.

The bonus points, along with the 10,000 earned from the £10k spend will be worth £600 Nectar points (if converted via Avios), or a sightly lower £566.67 if swapped for a gift card.

That’s still less than the overall £650 fee – but you’ll get access to around £450 worth of credit and travel insurance on top, and with extra cashback (more on this below), you’ll could make around £450 profit.

Bonus cashback

Earn up to £100 extra

There’s currently also £100 cashback available if you apply via TopCashback, or a lower £40 via Quidco (it’s always worth checking both as the rates change).

If you go via this route you’ll be able to get the slightly smaller 75,000 bonus (it can’t be stacked with the higher refer-a-friend deal).

But since the extra 5,000 points via this approach are worth £25 in gift vouchers or £33 in Nectar points (via Avios), you’re better off using the cashback sites (though do check – in the past the cashback rate have been lower).

This table breaks down what you’ll make from the offer depending on whether you go via TopCashback or a friend’s link.

With a potential value of £667, you’ll cover the annual fee – and it effectively means you get free travel insurance for the year, along with some other credits I’ll cover below that could be worth an extra £450.

Combine with other Amex Platinum features

Stack for up to £450 profit

If you’ve got the maximum boosted welcome bonus and cashback, there are additional offers that come with the Platinum card which can be worth another £450 over 12 months. I’ve written in detail about these here.