American Express Gold Card Now Live (Formerly Premier Reward) – $250 Annual Fee

Update: Offer is 50,000 + $100 when using a referral link.

American Express has formerly launched the new ‘American Express Gold Card‘ (formerly known as Premier Rewards Gold). Existing Premier Rewards Gold cardholders are converted to the new card and new benefits are already showing up.

Signup Bonus

Direct Link to offer

• Sign up bonus 25,000 points after $2,000 in spend, plus 20% back as a statement credit on purchases at U.S. Restaurants up to $100 back (first three months)
• Bonus is showing an end-date of January 9, 2019.
• Currently, if you go incognito, you’ll see an offer for 50,000 points after $2,000 in spend, plus the same 20% back as a statement credit on purchases at U.S. Restaurants up to $100 back.
• Referral offers are also showing the 50,000 points offer and the same January 9 end-date. Please use a reader’s referral from the comments of this post. 

Card Basics

• Annual fee of $250 NOT waived first year
• Card will earn at the following rates:
  • 4x points at Restaurants worldwide
  • 4x points at U.S. supermarkets (up to $25,000 in spend per calendar year)
  • 3x points for flights booked directly with airlines
  • 1x points on all other purchases
• $120 dining credit. This is a $10 monthly credit that can be used at Grubhub, Seamless, The Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Shake  Shack, and Boxed.com
• $100 airline fee credit
• Metal card design in gold, or limited edition rose gold until 1/9/2019

F.A.Q’s

Will this be treated as a new product (e.g can I get the bonus on this card if I’ve had it before)?

I very much doubt it, this is a product refresh/revamp with a new name and benefits rather than a new card. Existing cardholders will automatically receive the new benefits. This exact same situation happened with the Ascend card and it was not treated as a new card.

Our Verdict

I think the new benefits make up for the $55 annual fee difference, but that will really depend on whether you can take advantage of the dining credit and 4x on groceries or not. I don’t think the current offer is attractive for new cardholders at all though, keep in mind as recently as yesterday this card was offering 50,000 points with the annual fee waived first year. I’d personally be waiting for a much better offer to come along if you’re not an existing cardholder. I’m actually shocked that the annual fee isn’t waived first year on this new card. I did say there were some rumors indicating a $250 annual fee in our ‘should you sign up for the premier rewards gold card‘, hopefully readers who were interested in the card picked it up before these changes. If you didn’t I’d just sit tight and wait for a better offer to come along. As always if you have any questions about American Express cards read this linked post first. I won’t be adding this to our list of the best credit card sign up bonuses.

Hat tip to /r/churning & FM