Activate these 14 Amex Platinum card benefits so you can get hundreds of dollars in perks

09.01.2024 - 19:59 / insider.com

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The Platinum Card® from American Express has one of the highest annual fees of any publicly available consumer credit card —$695 — but the perks of the card can more than outweigh the annual cost. For many frequent travelers, the Amex Platinum Card is a must-have, but even if you're sticking closer to home, you can still get hundreds of dollars in value from its benefits if you enroll.

What's more, there's currently a great welcome offer on the card that is incredibly rewarding even if you're not traveling right now. You'll earn 80,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $8,000 on purchases on your new card in your first six months of card membership. That's worth around $1,440 in travel, based on Insider's points and miles valuations.

With a full six months to meet the minimum spending requirement, it should be easy for most people to unlock the welcome bonus.

Earn 5X Membership Rewards® Points for flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel (on up to $500,000 per calendar year) and on prepaid hotels booked with American Express Travel. Earn 1X Points on other purchases.

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Earn 80,000 Membership Rewards® points

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If you want as many premium travel perks as possible, The Platinum Card® from American Express could be the right card for you. The annual fee is high, but you get a long list of benefits such as airport lounge access, travel statement credits, complimentary hotel elite status, and more.

Some of the Amex Platinum's best benefits need to be activated before you can use them. To make sure you don't miss out, here's what you should do as soon as you get your card so that you can make the most of it.

One of the biggest perks of the Amex Platinum Card is a yearly airline incidental fee credit. Each calendar year, you can choose one airline on which you can get up to $200 in fees reimbursed as a statement credit when you use your card for the purchase**.

While the fee credit isn't meant to include airfare, it covers extras like checked bags, flight-change fees, inflight food and drinks, fees for traveling with a pet, lounge day passes (for lounges you don't already have access to), and sometimes things like seat assignments and extra legroom upgrade fees.

The best part of the airline credit is that because you get it each calendar year (instead of cardmember year), you can get it twice before you pay your second annual fee. For example:

This means you can get up to