During the first six or so months of the pandemic American Express shifted their focus to enhancing card offers and encouraging spending for existing cardmembers. Those offers were extended to almost all of American Express’ cards except for one part of their portfolio, the AIR MILES co-brand partnership. Their AIR MILES cards seemed to be forgotten during this time as Amex supported their Membership Rewards Cards, the Marriott Bonvoy cards and their small business card portfolio save for AIR MILES. But now as the economy is slowly recovering American Express has moved dollars back to acquiring new customers including see some love for the AIR MILES side of things!
Update: Amex reached out to me to let me know that there were various initiatives Amex offered on their AIR MILES Card
portfolio during the pandemic which included wireless credits for select
Consumer and Business Cardmembers along with extensions to the
companion flight and annual travel benefits. Terms and conditions apply.
They also let me know that select Cardmembers will be seeing additional offers In the near future.
As of today there is a new increased welcome bonus offer for the American Express AIR MILES Platinum Credit Card.
Here are the exact details wording of the new offer:
New American Express® AIR MILES®* Platinum Credit Card Cardmembers, earn a Welcome Bonus of 3,000 AIR MILES®* Bonus Miles when you charge a total of $1,500 in purchases to your Card within your first three months of Cardmembership. That’s enough to redeem for $310 towards your purchases with AIR MILES®* Cash
Here at Rewards Canada we consider this card the best AIR MILES co-brand credit card in the market thanks to an amazing earn potential. It is the only card in the market that earns 1
AIR MILES Reward Mile for every $5 spend in the select categories of
food and drinks as well as gas and transit. All other spending earns 1
AIR MILES Reward Miles for every $10 spent – that’s the rate earned on
the next best AIR MILES card.
Add in this welcome bonus of 3,000 miles, an annual travel redemption
benefit that saves you 25% on an AIR MILES award flight (up to 750 miles
in total discount) and you see why this card is the best AIR MILES
credit card in Canada.
In a true valuation of the welcome bonus these 3,000 AIR MILES are worth a minimum $210 towards travels (we value AIR MILES on average at 0.11 to 0.15 cents each for travel) or ~$196 as Cash Rewards. These numbers take the complete value of the welcome less the annual fee which with this card is $120 per year.