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.
YMMV situation. My recently acquired AmexPlat is backdated to my first Amex card.
Does this work for a charge card or just good for a credit card? Thanks!
Yes, it works for both.
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.
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.
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?
Authorized users used to be backdated to when the primary cardholder originally joined, but that loophole was closed when it was found that people were selling their authorized user slots. I’m not sure if it will backdate till when you were first an authorized user – can anybody else comment? My thought is that it won’t, but that is a 100% a guess.
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?
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
Your new 2014 card should be dated 2007.
It gets backdated to your original opening date regardless of closures.
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.
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.
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.
They back date it to the year it was open and then the month you applied. E.g if your first card was open in June 2010 and then you applied for a credit card in January 2015, the most recent card would show an opening date of January 2010. So in your case there isn’t really any backdating possible. There is also no need to call for this, it happens automatically.
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.”