The Amex Platinum Card Gets A New $30 Monthly PayPal Credit

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The Platinum Card from American Express comes with a not-insignificant $550 annual fee but for a significant part of 2020 that annual fee could be partially offset by a $20 monthly streaming credit and a $20 monthly wireless credit. With the dawn of a new year, those credits expired but now Amex has introduced a new credit as it continues to try to keep its premium personal card relevant while the travel world struggles to recover.

The Platinum Card’s Monthly PayPal Credit

Here are the key things that you need to know:

• The monthly credit is worth up to $30 per primary card account. Additional cards do not get their own separate credit but their spending will trigger the primary card’s credit if it qualifies.
• The credit is available monthly between January and June 2021 (6 months)
• This credit is only available valid on the US personal Platinum Card only
• No registration is required
• Platinum Card holders should add their card to their PayPal accounts and then use it when paying via PayPal to trigger the credit.
• In order to trigger the credit, all transactions must be:
  • Made in US Dollars
  • Made with US merchants
  • Made via a US PayPal account
• Eligible purchases do not include fees or interest charges, purchases or reloading of prepaid cards, purchases of gift cards, person-to-person payments including those for goods and services, or purchases of other cash equivalents.

You can get more details on this new credit from this FAQ page on which you’ll also find the full terms and conditions.

Quick Thoughts

How easily and effectively you used last year’s wireless and streaming credits will probably dictate how you feel about this new PayPal credit as although this credit is worth $10 less per month than the credits we saw in 2020, I actually prefer it.

While I made good use of the streaming credit (courtesy of Apple loads) I didn’t really get great use out of the wireless credit but I know that I’ll easily be able to make the most of a $30 PayPal credit every month – enough retailers and online sites now accept PayPal that it really shouldn’t be a challenge to use the credit up.

Personally, I’ll probably use my credit to load up my Coffee Bean account (I prefer to use the various Chase offers to load up my Starbucks account) or, once I’m back home in LA, I’ll pay Uber via PayPal and use up my new credit that way (I’ll report back if I discover that either of those redemptions mentions fails to trigger the credit).

Overall this is pretty good news. The Platinum Card currently offers up to $200/year in Uber credits, up to $180 in PayPal credits, $100/year in Saks 5th Avenue credits, and a $200/year Airline Fee credit so even if you can’t max-out all the Uber credit or all the Airline Fee credit there’s still scope to get a large portion of the annual fee rebated…and then there are all the great Platinum Card Amex Offers that we saw loaded earlier today.

2021 looks set to be a year in which it should be relatively easy to make the Platinum Card pay for itself.

Bottom Line

If you have a US-issued personal Platinum Card you should make sure that you associate it with your PayPal account sooner rather than later as, with immediate effect, the Platinum Card now offers a $30/month PayPal fee credit for the next six months.