American Express teased updates coming later this year to its travel-focused Platinum credit cards, announcing what it called “its largest investment ever” in a credit-card refresh.
“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,” Howard Grosfield, Amex’s group president for U.S. consumer services, said in a statement Monday.
Amex raised its Platinum card annual fee to $695 in July 2021, when it also added $200 in annual hotel credits. Since then, the New York-based company has faced intensifying competition for premium credit-card customers, including from JPMorganChase’s Sapphire Reserve card and Capital One Financial’s Venture X Rewards card.
The Amex update will apply to both the U.S. consumer and business Platinum cards, the company said. It didn’t provide more specifics on what changes are coming.
Amex had said during
“We’re not going to stop the refresh strategy,” CEO Stephen Squeri said during the April 17 call. “From an ROI perspective, I don’t think there would be a reason to do that.”
Amex did not change its product refreshes during past economic crises, Squeri said. “We haven’t stopped refreshes even in the face of the [COVID-19] pandemic.”
Product refreshes take months to execute and are based on a long-term view of demand and customer health, he said.
Amex is seeking new areas of growth. It has expanded its ability to offer payments and other products to small businesses, which suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation under President Joe Biden. Squeri in the past has said Amex would
Last week, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it would roll out a
In April, the credit card company was reportedly seeking to be the issuing bank and network processor for
Amex’s bet on Gen Z customers is paying off, with the segment accounting for around 5% of all U.S. spending on the firm’s cards and other products, Chief Financial Officer Christophe Le Caillec said last week. That Gen Z-driven transaction volume — known as billed business — also grew by 40% during the first three months of the year compared to same period a year ago, he said.
The U.S. card payments market is likely to grow 2.4% in 2025, totaling $10.8 trillion, according to a GlobalData report issued in April. That would be lower than the growth rate of the previous two years, 5% in 2024 and 6% in 2023. GlobalData at the time attributed the lower growth to tariff and trade uncertainty.
—John Adams contributed to this article.