AmEx Platinum Turns Millennials, Gen Z Into Big Spenders

The American Express platinum card had bucked any inflation and recession qualms among younger consumers to gain a record new number of users.

The credit card has reinvented itself as the ultimate status symbol by upping ostentatious perks, Bloomberg reports.

It started with hundreds of thousands of fancy flyers to well-to-do Millennial and Gen Z households, infused with a high-end perfume combining the scent of pink peppercorns, lavender and leather.

The platinum offer was for thousands of points and a slew of benefits—including at Saks Fifth Avenue, luxury gyms and travel agencies touting personal concierges.

AmEx repositioned its platinum card in the minds of its cardholders to be more like, as Bloomberg puts it, a “personal butler fulfilling the affluent class’s every whim. And the affluent class is, for now, still spending like it’s 1999.

“In the weird and cultish world of credit card ostentation, AmEx remains the ultimate status symbol.”

AmEx even now sports lavish airport lounges, like that at John F. Kennedy International Airport, complete with Michelin-star chefs and slick bartenders.

It’s a big reversal for the 175-year-old company, which only two years ago was losing customers in droves to JPMorgan Chase and other big banks. In the first three months of the pandemic in 2020, AmEx’s earnings per share dropped by 80%.

Today, the platinum status symbol can be yours, too, for $695, up from the $550 AmEx was charging before the pandemic.

Even Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett is a fan, saying, “I can’t put in the minds of people what is in their minds about American Express.”