Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Use your Amex Platinum dining credit for an Ivy gift card and get a free bottle of Cuvée

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A valuable benefit that comes with The Platinum Card from American Express is £300 of annual dining credit, increasing to £400 on 1st January 2025. It makes a big dint in the annual membership fee.

For 2024, you receive:

  • £150 to spend in 170 or so UK restaurants
  • £150 to spend in 1,000+ international restaurants
Use your American Express Platinum dining credit for an Ivy gift card

For 2025, you receive:

  • £200 to spend in 170 or so UK restaurants, split into £100 between January and June and £100 between July and December
  • £200 to spend in 1,000+ international restaurants, split into £100 between January and June and £100 between July and December

You can spend the money over multiple visits to multiple restaurants if you wish. It doesn’t need to be spent in one go.

One of the most common questions asked in our forum is whether the £150 UK Platinum Dining credit can be used for a restaurant gift card. This is a handy way of using your credit if you don’t think you can make it to a participating restaurant before 31st December.

If you mean ‘a restaurant gift card’ you can order online then the answer is No.

However, if you want to use your £150 of UK Platinum Dining credit for a meal to enjoy next year, the most popular option is a gift card for ‘The Ivy’ group of restaurants.

You must buy ‘The Ivy’ gift cards in person to trigger the £150 Platinum dining credit. Do not buy them online because the dining credit won’t trigger.

Get a free bottle of sparking Cuvée

The Ivy has brought back the ‘free booze’ offer it ran last year.

Buy a £100 gift card and you will receive a free bottle of The Ivy Sparkling Cuvée. See the website here.

Use your American Express Platinum dining credit for an Ivy gift card

The offer works for online or in-restaurant gift card purchases, but the American Express Platinum cashback offer only applies if you buy a gift card in a restaurant.

Check the list of participating restaurants first to ensure that your local branch of The Ivy is included in the Amex cashback deal. You need to avoid The Ivy Belfast because it is not offering the Cuvée due to local licensing restrictions.

To maximise the £150 restaurant credit, you can buy a £100 gift card – to trigger the Cuvée – and a separate £50 card to get to £150 and receive the full cashback.

Remember that Amex Platinum has an 80,000 points bonus

If you had been thinking about getting The Platinum Card from American Express, now is a great time.

The sign-up bonus is increased to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, which converts to 80,000 Avios, if you can spend £10,000 in six months.

In terms of sign-up points, dining and Harvey Nichols credits, you would receive in your first year:

  • 80,000 Membership Rewards points
  • £300 of annual dining credit (£150 UK, £150 international) to use by 31st December 2024
  • £400 of annual dining credit (£200 UK, £200 international) on 1st January 2025 to use during the year
  • £50 of Harvey Nichols credit to use by 31st December 2024 and a further £50 to spend between 1st January and 30th June 2025, when the offer ends

You can, for now, cancel the card at any point for a pro-rata fee refund.

Full details of the 80,000 points bonus offer are in this HfP article.

You can apply for the card here.

PS. Reader Tim has created an interactive map of restaurants where the Amex Platinum £150 dining credit can be used. Check it out here.


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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2025 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

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You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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Comments (84)

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

  • Paulw says:

    When does the offer end?

  • SteveJ says:

    Why is £100 gift card + £50 better than just buying a £150 gift card? They can load up the gift cards with any value you like.

    Both have the same end result, free bottle plus a dining credit. Unless you plan to gift the cards on I don’t see the value in breaking it up in the way suggested.

    • Rob says:

      Robin told me the staff insisted that he had to buy a card for exactly £100 or he wasn’t getting his bottle. Your experience may vary.

      • Jonathan says:

        I did this a few days ago and was told I had to have a £100 ‘Sparkling Gift Card’ and then an additional £50 separate gift card. I can only assume the business is doing an internal inter-restaurant promotion to see who can sell the most £100 gifts cards.

  • John Caribbean says:

    Last year the bottle was with a meal when you used the gift card.

    Presume the best way is 2*£100 gift cards, getting two bottles in the post

    • Rob says:

      You don’t get them in the post. It is handed over when you buy your card in the restaurant.

      • John Caribbean says:

        Ah ok. The description is “delivered straight to your door” but that must be online only.
        Thanks

        • mradey says:

          It’s a little chaotic – I tried online…. there is a postage charge of just under £5. The bottle arrived promptly – 2 days if I recall, the gift card arrived 5 days later. I think the idea is that you can gift the card to someone else (i.e. post to a different address) and keep the sparkling wine for yourself.

          • r* says:

            If you ordered the giftcard online hoping to get amex credit, youre probably not getting the credit.

            If you get the 100+50 vouchers in store (and it does gavevto be 100+50 to get the wine) you are given the bottle right away along with the two giftcards

  • Tazzie says:

    Belfast bit included. The fact that no restaurants in the whole island of Ireland participate, make this card pretty expensive for minimal benefit.

  • Dirtyneedlebluesky says:

    This is a great tip.

    A trip to The Ivy towards Christmas time has become somewhat off a recent tradition since I’ve had the Amex Plat. No special one to share it with me this year though so this appeals a lot more at the moment!

    What value are we placing on the bottle? I’m assuming it’s not the same quality as the cuvee they sell for £17.50 per glass in Manchester!

  • N says:

    surely better value would be to buy 2x £100 vouchers?

    You get 2x bottles + £200 credit for £50?

  • Simey says:

    Of course, Dublin and Belfast excluded. So once again, we finally have a restaurant in N. Ireland that I could use £150 credit for without having to go to the mainland but it’s excluded both by Amex and this promotion. Typical!

  • Frances says:

    anyone know if there is a way to see iff you have used your credit? without trawling through a year’s statements?

    • r* says:

      Ask in chat how much you have left

    • JimBurgessHill says:

      Just use the “view by year” feature on your card’s activity the filter on credits only and you’ll see your credits such as UK & abroad dining and Harvey Nics

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

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