Referral program
Please ping me if you’re interested in Amex after reading this note, and I’ll share a referral link. You’ll get £25, I’ll get £30, everyone’s happy. 🎉
My personal use case
- Buy stuff online and in stores using Amex credit card;
- Get cashback.
Which Amex card should I get?
Amex offers several different types of cards with different benefits. Some of them reward you with miles and discounts in selected stores, but I was primarily interested in cashback.
Amex has two main types of cashback credit cards:
- Platinum Cashback Everyday:
- No fees.
- 0.5% cashback on first ÂŁ10k of purchases every year, 1% over ÂŁ10k.
- New customers get 5% cashback on your purchases (up to ÂŁ100) in the first 3 months.
- Platinum Cashback:
- Annual ÂŁ25 fee.
- 0.75% cashback on first ÂŁ10k, 1.25% over ÂŁ10k.
- New customers get 5% cashback on your purchases (up to ÂŁ125) in the first 3 months.
Simple arithmetic shows that if you’re planning to spend £10k/year or more, it’s worth getting the Platinum Cashback card with a fee and higher rates, if less – then the free Everyday version will work better.
I heard that Amex isn’t accepted everywhere, is that so?
The only places where Amex isn’t accepted are usually small non-chain no-name grocery stores or family restaurants. So yes, occasionally I buy stuff in places where Amex isn’t accepted, but it’s quite rare.
More importantly, most of the places where you’re likely to spend most of your money on the large purchases all accept Amex. A few examples:
- Big sellers-of-everything like Amazon and Argos;
- Airlines and hotels;
- Brand stores like Gap, Mango, Zara, Nike, etc.;
- Chains stores like M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Boots, etc.;
- Chain restaurants like Flat Iron, Honest Burgers, Five Guys, etc.;
- Subscription services like Spotify, Netflix, etc.;
- TFL;
- Ukrainian social club @ Holland Park.
Are there any other alternatives for cashback cards?
There’s one other card you should know about: Chase debit card. It offers 1% cashback on any purchases you make with it, with no annual fees. And it’s a Mastercard, so it’s accepted everywhere.
There’s one major downside: 1% cashback is only offered on your first year with Chase.
For me, it’s a very nice addition to my Amex card (I always have them both on me), but not a replacement. Several reasons:
- Convenience. I never have to worry about topping it up, I just spend the bank’s money, and they charge my linked bank account once a month.
- Credit score. No one can tell for sure how big of a deal it is in the UK, but I did notice that my Experian score bumped when I started using Amex.
- Bank’s money. Using Amex’s money for entire month allows me to keep my money on my accounts for a bit longer, which yields interest/gains from investments. It’s almost like I’m borrowing Amex’s money every month to make gains from it and they return it back to them.