American Express Ratchets Up the Platinum Rewards

American Express has long been known as kind of the also-ran of the credit card world, kind of in the same boat as Discover. Lagging behind Visa and Mastercard, American Express hasn’t had a whole lot of luck in the field.

However, it’s not taking this development lying down, as anyone who signs up for a Platinum card will receive not the 40,000 bonus points of subscriptions past, but rather 60,000 bonus points instead.

This is commonly considered to be a move to draw attention away from the recently-unveiled Sapphire Reserve card from JPMorgan Chase, and is clearly going after the big spender. Customers will need to spend more to get the points, however, being required to spend $5,000 in the first three months, up from the original $3,000 in the same time frame.

American Express will be taking on a hefty new cost up front to hand out all those bonus points, but the move is likely geared toward bringing in new customers in the midst of a very competitive mobile payments ecosystem.

It’s worth noting that American Express is off the highs, however; in the closing days of 2016, American Express was offering as much as 100,000 points—worth around $1,500—for a start. With card issuers spending a combined $22.6 billion in 2016—it was just $10.4 billion in 2010, for comparison’s sake—there’s a clear arms race on here.

That’s a necessary expense, of course; credit card companies likely have to work a bit harder to pull in customers, given the rise of mobile payment systems and the increase of debit card operations. There are likely quite a few former credit card users who, post-Great Recession, are a little less likely to pull plastic on a purchase. Offering some big new rewards might help pull back some of those losses, even if some are likely sufficiently burned to stay out of the credit card game for good.

There have never been so many options when it comes to mobile payments, and the good news is that means likely competition for users. While not everyone offers a deal, those who do may be offering that deal a little harder than normal to pull in users.