American Express recently released an enhanced version of its trademark Platinum card. It comes with an annual fee of $895 for both consumer and business accounts. This new fee represents a significant jump of about 29% over the previous $695 fee. Current customers will start seeing this new fee applied on their renewal dates starting January 2, 2024.
The revamped Platinum card now showers cardholders with $3,500 in annual benefits —more than triple the previous amount. These benefits mostly take the shape of credits that reduce the cost of purchases made on the card. Perhaps most impressively, American Express did not eliminate any benefits, meaning cardholders don’t lose any of their current benefits that were previously available.
Howard Grosfield, president for U.S. consumer services at parent company American Express, added that the deal underscores the company’s mission to improve the customer experience.
“We spent an enormous amount of time around, how do we make this as easy as it can be for card members to understand, access and, most importantly, unlock all these great benefits.” – Howard Grosfield
Given where and how consumers are spending right now, the decision to go all-in with a revamped Platinum card is a smart strategic move. Moody’s Analytics data has shown us one surprising thing. Households in the top 10% income bracket accounted for almost ½ of all consumer expenditures during the second quarter of this year. This number marks the highest rate of spending on a share of overall expenditures by wealthy Americans in more than 30 years.
The new benefits package for the business version of the Platinum card adds additional hotel credits. In addition, you receive offsets for two of the largest software-as-a-service companies, Dell Technologies and Adobe. The improvements are a testament of American Express to enhance value for committed, active spenders, travelers and diners.
In a short period this summer and fall, the world’s two largest banks by assets—JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup—launched new and redesigned premium credit cards. It further illustrates how the luxury credit card space is booming. Yearly $300 Equinox credit American Express has recently overhauled its Platinum card. This update aims squarely at that competitive landscape, looking to give high income, high demand consumers what they want.
Rich Americans are engineering a huge amount of the economy’s spending to go narrowly where they want it to go. In retaliation, American Express is raising the bar on its value, features and benefits to deepen their most involved of cardholders.