American Express Launches Cash Magnet Card – $300 Sign Up Bonus & 1.5% Everywhere

Bonus is now $250.

As previously rumored American Express has officially launched a new card called ‘Cash Magnet‘. Let’s take a look at the new card.

Card Overview

• No annual fee
• Card earns 1.5% cash back on all purchases
• Sign up bonus of $300, broken down as follows:
  • Earn $150 back after you spend $1,000 or more in purchases with your new Card within the first 3 months of Card Membership.
  • Plus, earn an additional $150 back after you spend an additional $6,500 in purchases within your first 12 months.
• 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for first 15 months then a variable APR of 14.49% to 25.49% (3% or $5 balance transfer fee, whatever is more)

Our Verdict

This is a weird card from American Express, the 1.5% rate is supposed to compete with the Chase Freedom Unlimited but that card is significantly more useful due to the fact that it actually earns 1.5x Chase UR and those points can be transferred if you have a premium Chase card (Sapphire Preferred, Reserve, Ink Plus or Ink Preferred). There are a lot of other cards on the market offering 2%+ cash back so using this card long term doesn’t make sense. That being said the sign up bonus is good, so I suspect a lot of readers will sign up for the card/bonus just for that. I don’t see the bonus going any higher than this in the short to medium term, in fact I suspect it will probably go lower after the 7/18/18 end date (saw something similar with the Blue Business Plus card, although that has a better long term earning rate). In total you need to spend $7,500, you’d earn the $300 sign up bonus and $112.5 from the spend ($412.5 total). If you put the same $7,500 spend on a 2% card you’d only earn $150 so the bonus is significant in that respect. Personally I’d recommend signing up now if you value cash sign up bonuses, it might also be useful to have another no fee American Express card for holding long term for AmEx offers.

Keep in mind that you might get a pop up saying you’re not eligible for the sign u bonus now on American Express cards due to a vague new rule, although at least they are being up front about it. If you have any other questions, read this post first and if it’s still not answered ask below and I’ll do my best to answer.