AmEx Cash Magnet Credit Card Review (2021.1 Update: $200 Offer)

     2020-08-06     2023-10-06 4 Comments

AmEx

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AmEx Cash Magnet Credit Card Review

2020.12 Update: It seems there’s only $100 or $200 offer now.

Application Link

Benefits

  1. $200 offer: earn $200 after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months. The recent best offer is $300.
  2. Earn 1.5% cash back on every purchase.
  3. Easy to get approved, you can try to apply for this credit card when you only have a credit history for 3 months (make sure you can see your credit report before applying), there have been several successful data points around.
  4. No annual fee.
  5. With this card, you can get access to Amex Offers, which usually offers very good discounts at some stores, such as: spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.

Disadvantages

  1. It has foreign transaction fee, so it's not a good choice outside the US.
  2. This credit card is on the American Express Network, not Visa or MasterCard, so some small stores may not accept it.

Introduction to MR Points

  • You can earn MR points with AmEx ED, AmEx EDP, AmEx Green, AmEx Gold, AmEx Platinum, AmEx Platinum for Schwab, AmEx Platinum for Morgan Stanley, AmEx Blue Business Plus, AmEx Business Green, AmEx Business Gold, AmEx Business Platinum, etc.
  • The MR points you earn on different MR cards will automatically go to the same MR account.
  • MR points never expire. You will not lose the MR points on one card if you close the account, but you will lose all of the MR points if you close all of the MR cards. In order to avoid losing your MR points, we recommend to keep the no annual fee AmEx ED.
  • If you have any of the MR cards, MR points can be transferred to some airline miles. One of the most common and best way to use MR points is to 1:1 transfer them to All Nippon Airways (ANA, NH) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Air Canada (AC) (Star Alliance), Delta Air Lines (DL) (SkyTeam), British Airways (BA) (Oneworld), Asia Miles (Oneworld), Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use MR in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
  • If you have any of the MR cards, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate about 1 cent/point towards air tickets on AmEx travel portal.
  • If you have AmEx Platinum for Schwab, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 1.1 cents/point towards cash. If you don't want to spend time studying airline miles, this is a pretty good way to cash out the points. If you don't have this card, you can only redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 0.6 cents/point towards cash.
  • In summary, we estimate that MR points are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
  • For more information about MR points, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to MR: How to Earn and Introduction to MR: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

  1. You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
  2. [New] [Family language] AmEx begins to add family language: higher annual fees cards will affect the welcome offers on lower annual fee ones in the same family series. Specifically, having held Cash Magnet makes you ineligible for the welcome offer of BCE. So if you want both, you should apply for BCE first.
  3. AmEx doesn’t care about the number of hard pulls.
  4. You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 3 months.
  5. You must wait at least 90 days between the application for ED and EDP, otherwise the application will be cancelled.
  6. Only one AmEx credit card can be approved in a day. This rule does not apply to charge cards, you can be approved for one credit card and multiple charge cards in the day. Multiple cards approved in the same day will only have one Hard Pull.
  7. Only 2 AmEx credit cards can be approved within 90 days, but again, this rule does not apply to charge cards.
  8. You can keep at most 5 AmEx credit cards, not including charge cards.

Summary

The card is said to compete with Chase Freedom Unlimited, but CFU does have advantage if you hold any Chase premium card that can boost the points you earned on CFU card. If you want point transfer availability, Everyday and Everyday Preferred are the better options. Even among no AF cards, there are options that offer better cash back rate, such as Citi Double Cash (2% everything). So in summary, I personally don’t recommend this card.

After Applying

  • Click here to check AmEx application status.
  • AmEx reconsideration backdoor number: 877-399-3083. The “real” backdoor number of Amex is well protected. Different from Chase, the representatives from this AmEx reconsideration backdoor number only have the right to help you submit requests.

Historical Offers Chart

Note: The offer was $150 + $150 or $100 some time in the past. But the spending requirements after $150 are huge, so we don’t treat them as sign-up bonus, we treat them as spending bonus instead.

Application Link

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