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End of an era as American Express retires its iconic ‘Green’ card

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Today is a symbolic moment for the UK payment cards industry, although – in a sign of the times – it won’t actually impact many people.

The American Express Green Card has been removed from the UK market.

This is the first half of a two-part announcement today. Amex has also announced that The Platinum Card will become a credit card and not a charge card – with a huge sign-up bonus of 60,000 points and an extra £200 to spend on travel – you can apply for that here.

Originally launched in 1969 in the United States, the Green Card was, at least when I was young, the symbolic archetypal American Express card. Despite that, it wasn’t actually the first Amex card, which was purple.

If you are a certain age, as I am, the words ‘American Express’ immediately conjure up a picture of the card above.

You probably also remember TV ads like this one, with the ‘Don’t Leave Home Without It’ strapline:

Click here to see the original of that ad on YouTube. Note the bit at the end recommending that you go to Oracle page 196 for more information ….

Today, American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is arguably the most high profile of Amex’s own brand cards. The British Airways cards dominate the co-brand side. There is no real role for The Green Card.

Neglected, but The Green Card had its fans

The Green Card has been neglected. We didn’t even mention it on HfP until a couple of years ago, and even recently our coverage was limited to one card review per year. It has never been on our main credit card directory page.

That said, it wasn’t entirely useless. I know that there are HfP readers who have the card primarily for its purchase protection coverage, which is NOT standard across other Amex cards.

To quote from the old Amex Green website:

  • When the manufacturer’s warranty expires on your favourite new purchase, we’ll give you a year’s Extended Warranty up to £1,500 per item
  • Enjoy Refund Protection on eligible items.  If the UK retailer won’t refund or replace the eligible item, we will, up to a maximum of £200.
  • You also get Purchase Protection. If you bought it on your Card and it’s stolen or damaged within 90 days, we’ll replace or repair it, or refund you up to £2,500 per eligible item.

A surprising (to me) number of people were happy to pay £60 per year for The Green Card in order to access the purchase protection benefit.

That said it also, of course, got you access to Shop Small, kept your Membership Rewards balance from expiring if you were cancelling a more expensive Amex card and came with the usual Amex statement credit offers. You were very likely to get your £60 back in savings over the year.

An iconic image

The Green Card is, without a doubt, one of the iconic consumer images of our time.

Whilst Andy Warhol never got around to painting one, when I was in Palma last year, I saw this image – which is about three foot wide – for sale in a gallery:

I doubt we’ll be seeing the Tesco Clubcard Mastercard credit card treated the same way in a hurry …..

The Green Card was, apparently, originally known as the Money Card and the colour was chosen to match dollar bills. It was launched at the same time as the Boeing 747 opened up international travel to the American middle class (Pan Am started operating the 747 in early 1970, The Green Card was launched in 1969) and was intended to work alongside the key American Express business of issuing travellers cheques.

The card became a status symbol and was promoted – as per the Roger Daltry ad above – as something to be used for travel and business. It wasn’t meant to be the card you used at Tesco. The idea that Costco would eventually become the biggest American Express co-brand partner in the US would have been anathema. (The Costco deal was lost in 2014, a blow so hard that the Amex share price fell by 50% and took three years to recover).

Faded glory

Over the years, of course, The Green Card has faded. As competition in the payment card space increased, American Express was forced to add better rewards and benefits to its products.

Rather than wreck the ‘purity’ of Green, and potentially to keep annual fees from Green cardholders coming in without offering anything extra, new cards such as Amex Gold were introduced.

It soon made little sense to pay £60 per year for The Green Card, a card which didn’t even come with a sign-up bonus.

With the closure of The Green Card and the conversion of The Platinum Card to a credit card (437.9% APR!), American Express is getting close to exiting the charge card business in the UK.

For consumers, the charge card model has few benefits except for people who want a card which forces them to repay their balance every month.

Whilst the charge cards used to be promoted as ‘you don’t have a credit limit so you can buy anything you like’, this has not been the case for a long time – the charge cards do have limits, albeit unpublicised to users. The Amex app even has a ‘Check Spending Power’ button. Click it, type in a transaction value and you will be told if it will be accepted or not.

The Green Card isn’t totally disappearing, at least for now. It will continue to exist in other markets and, if you really want one, American Express will let UK residents apply for the International Dollar Card or International Euro Card. I have an Amex Green card in a US$ version via this route, something I use purely to access different Membership Rewards partners.

For clarity, if you currently hold The Green Card in the UK, nothing changes. It will continue to function as usual and will be renewed. The card is only withdrawn today for new applicants.

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Comments (76)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Harrier25 says:
    3 Aug3 August 08:46

    Well my wallet is now 100% vintage as of today with the two payment cards currently in it being Amex Green and Hilton Barclaycard. I watched Duran Duran play live at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony last week too. I’m made up!

  • Jonathan says:
    3 Aug3 August 08:57

    It’d be good if the free MR card (ARCC) inherits this card design, which would bring it in line with the other card designs of cards that earn MR points

    • BuildBackBetter says:
      3 Aug3 August 09:44

      Good point. The free ARCC card looks like it was designed by a school kid.

      • Roy says:
        3 Aug3 August 11:19

        I had one for a while. It looks much better in real life than in the photos IMO, as photos can’t do justice to the translucent, nearly transparent nature of it.

    • Jasdev says:
      3 Aug3 August 15:00

      I didn’t like the look of the ARCC either but when I had one, I was surprised to get complimented on the card twice when spending with it. Some people really liked the see-through design, apparently.

  • Magic Mike says:
    3 Aug3 August 09:30

    Possible future hfp article: which amex cards come with purchase protection etc and which don’t…

    I couldn’t tell you…

    • Chas says:
      3 Aug3 August 09:35

      Mike – the answer now is “none of them”!

      • BuildBackBetter says:
        3 Aug3 August 09:47

        Not even ICC Green card?

        • Chas says:
          3 Aug3 August 10:05

          I’m not sure about that, but the FX charge for UK spend would significantly detract from the benefit though.

          I’m going to withdraw my original comment though, as it looks like the American Express Rewards Credit Card lists “purchase protection” as a benefit (“ Up to £2,500 towards repair or replacement if an eligible item purchased on the Card account is stolen or damaged within 90 days of purchase. Max cover is £20,000 in a 12 month period.”)

          • Harrier25 says:
            3 Aug3 August 10:12

            The extended manufacturer warranty benefit is only available on the Green card which is where the true value is for the small annual fee.

          • David says:
            3 Aug3 August 11:17

            Centurion has it

        • Harrier25 says:
          3 Aug3 August 10:07

          Nope. I have the Green card for the additional year’s manufacturer warranty which is definitely worth the £60 annual fee when you look at what the likes of Currys charge for such cover. Luckily looks like this benefit will continue for me as an existing card holder.

          • mark2 says:
            3 Aug3 August 10:22

            John Lewis give two years warranty on most electrical goods. And I always pay with a gift card bought with at least 10% cash back.

          • Harrier25 says:
            3 Aug3 August 10:47

            Very good if you purchase all your household goods from only John Lewis, but I would bet that no one does.

      • Jonathan says:
        3 Aug3 August 10:40

        John Lewis offers two years warranty on Apple products, if you buy directly from Apple they’ll only give you one year

        • Harrier25 says:
          3 Aug3 August 10:54

          …or buy directly from Apple and get the additional year’s warranty curtesy of the now vintage Amex Green!

  • RussellH says:
    3 Aug3 August 10:07

    In full pedant mode, I do not recall Amex ever issuing “travellers cheques”.
    Were they not always “travelers checks”?
    🙂

    • Chas says:
      3 Aug3 August 10:18

      Errrr, no…….

      “A traveller’s cheque is a medium of exchange that can be used in place of hard currency. They can be denominated in one of a number of major world currencies and are preprinted, fixed-amount cheques designed to allow the person signing it to make an unconditional payment to someone else as a result of having paid the issuer for that privilege.” source: Wikipedia

      • Jay-Marc says:
        3 Aug3 August 12:14

        Amex has always used ‘Travelers Cheques’; at least I can find 1920s adverts using that. There was some use of the ‘cheque’ spelling in 19th century USA so I guess they started with it and didn’t change.

        • Polly says:
          3 Aug3 August 20:35

          I bought a bunch of them when going to work in the USA and Paris. Wish l had kept a small denomination one now.

      • Bagoly says:
        3 Aug3 August 12:57

        So seems likely that that wikipedia article was created/edited by a Brit rather than an American!

  • Jonathan says:
    3 Aug3 August 11:43

    I do sometimes think to myself if anyone from Amex who has control of which of their cards are on the market ever comes on here and reads the comments

    Maybe not very often since they’d have surely buckled down heavily on sign up bonuses for Platinum and BAPP, plus would’ve got wise to people cancelling their card, then immediately afterwards becoming an additional cardholder on their spouse / partner’s account(s) if applicable

    Do you know at all Rob ?

    • Rob says:
      3 Aug3 August 11:48

      They read everything.

      There are, oddly, no ‘trade’ website for people who work in credit cards. HfP is basically the industry news site, albeit we only look at the loyalty end.

      • BuildBackBetter says:
        3 Aug3 August 11:57

        Given they have promoted Gold card heavily last few years, wouldnt giving a small upgrade bonus to get them to try platinum make sense? Wonder if amex is missing an opportunity.

        • Jonathan says:
          3 Aug3 August 12:24

          They’ve almost certainly thought everything through thoroughly before implementing changes on sign up bonuses rules, and they almost certainly won’t be changing things anytime soon, and based on what Rob said above, we all know that they’re fully aware of common tactics used by people to boost their Avios balances.

          I do understand where you’re coming from that there should ideally be a sign up bonus if upgrading from ARCC to Gold / Platinum etc. but it’s not something I see them doing, not in the short term at the very least if at all

  • Frankie says:
    3 Aug3 August 14:34

    My GSK Corporate card was always green. Wonder if the corporate amex is staying green. I left there a year ago so no idea. Though, of course, GSK is no longer the GSK it was a month ago with the recent demerger. Haleon has green as its main colour, so the green would still work well there! 🙂

    • Panda Mick says:
      3 Aug3 August 15:48

      My first thoughts sprung to the corp card used by various companies. I do think the £30 to have membership rewards enabled on your card is the deal of decade….

      (Especially as I’m in Vegas for 18 days in august on business!)

    • Robski says:
      3 Aug3 August 20:58

      I would imagine so, I’ve just received a new one which looks identical to the personal Green card, but it says ‘Corporate’ underneath ‘American Express’. I believe this change is recent as colleagues still have the retro design, which is indeed still on the Amex website.

  • Symon says:
    3 Aug3 August 17:06

    I said they’d pull out of charge cards when they transformed the Gold card into a credit card. Rob as otherwise…

  • PIC says:
    3 Aug3 August 18:49

    This discussion thread really takes me back. I used Amex dollar-denominated traveler’s cheques on my first trip to the US in the mid 80’s (LHR-DEN-SFO on American Airlines). They were like cash even in small stores. I had just got my Green Amex Card a few months earlier (and I thought that I had really arrived as a professional because I had been approved!). You could order Amex traveler’s cheques on your card account and they were posted to you, so long as you sent a personal cheque for the GBP amount drawn on your UK bank account by return. You could send it by post or you could pop in to one of the American Express Travel Shops dotted around central London in those days and do it all over the counter. Great memories of international travel. I never held on the to Green card but I really did like the look of it. Even when I got Gold and then was “invited” to upgrade to Platinum when it was invitation-only, I still actually thought the Green card really looked the business! I should have held on to it. Certainly, the end of an era.

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