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On Friday last week, I reported that despite the lack of any obvious public announcement, Amex was going to be improving the CLEAR benefit that the American Express® Green Card offers. Well, as of today that improvement is live.
If you head over to the American Express site (or open the app) and take a look a the Green Card, you should now see that the card is offering a $189/year CLEAR statement credit where up until yesterday, that credit was worth just $100 (terms apply and enrolment is required).
Note: All information about the American Express® Green Card has been collected independently by Traveling For Miles. The American Express® Green Card is not currently available through Traveling For Miles.
Crucially, it looks as if this is a genuine improvement to what the American Express® Green Card offers because the annual fee doesn’t appear to have been increased…
…and the card continues to offer all the other key earning rates and benefits that it did before the CLEAR statement credit was raised.
- 3 points/dollar on eligible travel spending
- 3 points/dollar on restaurant spending worldwide
- 1 point/dollar on all other eligible spending
- $100 annual LoungeBuddy credit
- No foreign transaction fees
That’s actually pretty impressive as it now means that not only does the Green Card offer cardholders a $189/year statement credit in return for a $150 annual fee, but it also means that the Green Card now offers the same CLEAR benefit as the considerably more expensive Platinum Card® from American Express (review) and Business Platinum® Card from American Express.
As I pointed out on Friday, for cardholders who only ever travel solo, this won’t be a particularly big deal as although a single-person CLEAR membership can cost up to $189/year, you can get a discounted rate of $119 just by being a member of United MileagePlus or Delta SkyMiles (both of which are free to join).
For cardholders who travel with a companion, however, this statement credit increase should be a nice bonus thanks to the fact that CLEAR allows members to add up to 3 other people to their account for a fee of $60 per person.
What this means is that with this statement credit increase, two people with just a single American Express® Green Card between them will both be able to enjoy CLEAR membership without any further out-of-pocket spending required. That’s pretty good coming from a card that only charges a $150 annual fee.
Bottom line
The American Express® Green Card now comes with an improved $189 statement credit to help cardholders offset the cost of an annual CLEAR membership. This improvement appears to have been made without increasing the Green Card’s annual fee and without altering the other benefits that the Green Card offers so this is genuinely good news for cardholders.
