American Express Backdates Your Account Age To Your Oldest Card Internationally

Update: Unfortunately American Express no longer backdates any of their credit cards, regardless of whether you’re trying to backdate from an international card or not. Read more about this here.

One of my favorite things about American Express is that they back date your new accounts to the year you first were approved for a credit card. This means that if you first AmEx card was from back in 1998, all new accounts will have the opening date of 1998 as well. This is important to us because one of the scoring factors for the FICO score is something known as average age of accounts (AAoA), having American Express backdate credit cards helps us keep our AAoA nice and high whilst we open new accounts. I’ve written about this before and this tip is nothing new.

I recently received an e-mail from a reader that had immigrated to the U.S, in the e-mail he let me know that he was able to get a credit card with American Express without any credit history because he had a credit card with them in his home country. It’s interesting that the different American Express departments that are responsible for countries share this information, but what was more interesting is that when this person pulled their credit report his new American Express card was reporting an age of 6 years and he was already showing credit score of 766 according to Credit Karma.

Obviously this won’t really help you unless you’ve had an American Express card elsewhere in the world, but it is a useful trip for recent immigrants.

 

 

 

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16 Comments
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Debbie @ Traveling Well For Less
August 28, 2015 09:16

YMMV situation. My recently acquired AmexPlat is backdated to my first Amex card.

wenlong
wenlong (@guest_74710)
February 12, 2015 20:02

Does this work for a charge card or just good for a credit card? Thanks!

KP
KP (@guest_70743)
February 4, 2015 23:23

I think this really helps. I recently got 1 new Amex Card but my FICO scored increased instead of going little bit down, to my surprise even TransUnion got 1 point up. I think Amex doesn’t put TransUnion report. So now whenever we apply any Amex, all the cards will have original age as the first card opening date. That’s good for all.

robertw
robertw (@guest_70582)
February 4, 2015 17:01

I never knew about this. Age of accounts is not an issue with me but I can see their reasoning. Once you got that first card they consider you a customer, therefore all cards are backdated.

XP1
XP1 (@guest_70577)
February 4, 2015 16:47

How does this work for authorized users?

What if a person has been an authorized user since 2007 and if that person now applies as a primary user, would the primary user card be backdated to the authorized user card date?

Daniel
Daniel (@guest_70532)
February 4, 2015 14:29

I got my first AmEx card back in 2007, but I closed it in 2009 and didn’t have a card with them again until 2014. Does that mean my 2014 card is now backdated to 2009? Or would this not work for me since I wasn’t an AmEx customer in between the two cards?

Jonathan
Jonathan (@guest_70539)
February 4, 2015 15:12

I opened my first AMEX in 2001 and closed it in 2003. I had no other AMEX card until I opened another AMEX card in 2012, when I received the card, it was back dated for 2001. All my currently active AMEX cards have a 2001 date

XP1
XP1 (@guest_70576)
February 4, 2015 16:44

Your new 2014 card should be dated 2007.

Liz
Liz (@guest_76642)
February 15, 2015 20:50

This hasn’t been my experience. My Amex cards all have a date of 2007. But I had several Amex cards in the 90s and didn’t keep them open.

Sarimash
Sarimash (@guest_70502)
February 4, 2015 13:04

Any idea how this works with authorized users? I don’t have family with any AMEX cards to try this myself, but I’m curious if being an authorized user on a card would trigger your new accounts to be opened at the date of card’s opening.

Nigel
Nigel (@guest_70264)
February 3, 2015 23:50

Does Amex usually backdate to the exact month?

I opened a SPG card in June 2014, and a Old Blue in Sept, both reflect those dates on my CR. I know it’s only three months, but if they do it may be worth a call.

Thanks.

Marc
Marc (@guest_70259)
February 3, 2015 23:30

I’ve had success with this using the online chat functionality. Never tried to call them about this.
I basically just said “I think my ‘member since’ date is wrong.”