Major refresh coming to Amex Platinum and Business Platinum cards

American Express has posted an announcement that there will be a major refresh coming to the Amex Platinum and Business Platinum cards. There is not much detail in the announcement about what to expect, but it sounds like we should expect extensive updates and changes based on the announcement.

The press release notes that “the company is making its largest investment ever in a Card refresh”, signaling that we should probably expect significant changes.

Howard Grosfield, Group President, U.S. Consumer Services, is quoted as saying, “Platinum Card benefits and services resonate across generations, particularly with Millennial and Gen Z who accounted for 35% of total U.S. Consumer spending last quarter. We’re going to take these Cards to a new level, not only in what they offer in travel, dining and lifestyle benefits, but also in how they look and feel, to meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Personally, I’m hoping that they don’t spend too much money on how the cards look or feel and rather that they focus on useful benefits. The release goes on to note that there will be new Centurion Lounge openings coming in Newark, Salt Lake City, and Tokyo, Japan this year. It further sounds like Amex intends to maintain a focus on experiences, specifically noting that “American Express partners with leading brands on the Platinum Card and plans to announce more as part of the Card refresh”.

My read of the release is that we’ll likely see an expansion of coupon partnerships and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the launch of some sort of curated experiences platform, particularly given the mention of Millennial and Gen Z customers accounting for a significant (and likely growing) segment of spend on the cards. I sincerely hope that Amex also considers how they can reward spending for those customers and adds some useful bonus categories. As things stand, Platinum cards are useful for their benefits, but at a very high price point already, I have to wonder how much they could possibly increase the fee without adding some more useful everyday spending categories to the card.

We’ll keep our eyes on the cards and ear to the ground for further details, though I would expect that we won’t know more for quite a while.

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