AmEx Plat Offer: Get 5000 Bonus Points on fuel spends

By | June 7, 2021
amex platinum fuel offer

American Express Platinum Charge card is a rewarding metal in many aspects and now adding to that your Fuel spends are set to get better returns. Earlier Plat charge was fetching 1 MR Points/Rs.100 spend and now it has been changed to 5 MR. Here are all the details:

Offer Details

Offer 4 Bonus MR Points per Rs.100 on Fuel Spends
Max. Cap.5000 Bonus points / calendar month
Return on Spend1.25% to ~2.5%
Fulfilment90 days from date of txn
Amex Platinum Rewards on Fuel spends

Above offer appears to be a “card feature” going forward and not a temporary offer. However, expect a revision every year or so as “fuel” field itself is very much volatile.

This benefit lets you do effective spend of Rs.1.25L (a month) to hit the max. cap on bonus points.

That said, remember that you maybe charged a convenience fee if you’re using it on any fuel station other than HPCL and the charges are as below:

  • HPCL – Free (upto 5000 INR)
  • IOCL/BPCL – 1% + GST (upto 5000 INR)
  • Others – 2%+GST

Remember that HPCL too charges 1% fee beyond 5K INR (per txn) but as most of us don’t do that in a “single txn”, it maybe ignored.

Botton line

Its good to see decent amount of reward points on fuel spends too and I’m sure this would motivate many to use Amex Plat for fuel.

Even without the offer, I used to use Amex cards on HPCL for fuel spends, not for the rewards or benefits, but because of convenience and “NIL charges” and peace of mind, as I prefer not to focus on optimizing small spends and I believe no one should do either.

So that said, this benefit is quite a surprise & rewarding one.

What cards do you actually use for fuel, apart from those for Wallet loads? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

23 thoughts on “AmEx Plat Offer: Get 5000 Bonus Points on fuel spends

  1. Sandeep

    I use RBL ShopRite card which gives 2.5% worth of reward points for fuel and 5% worth of reward points for shopping.
    There is fuel surcharge waiver at all petrol pumps (I think Rs. 500 to Rs 3000 or something like that, but that covers all fuel spends for my car).

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Cap is on “Bonus points”, not on total points earned.

      Reply
  2. AbhiKohli

    May be they’ll ‘revise the feature benefit’ once people start traveling 😀
    Hardly any fuel spend these days.

    Reply
  3. Rishabh

    Nothing close to Bajaj FinServ Value Plus or Travel Easy card.
    Using it for more than an year with 10% flat cashback upto 250 per month on Value Plus & 400 per month on travel easy card.

    No redemption charges, and add 1% fuel surcharge waiver as well so in total 11% discount. I doubt any other bank card give value close to it even with accelerated reward points feature if any.

    Across number of posts in past I have mentioned about this card, but not sure why no importance given to it till now 🙂

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Because its from the house of RBL. Hope you’re getting the fulfilment as promised.

      Reply
      1. Rishabh

        So far used for 13 months with Fuel Spends of 4000 and each month got the 400 cashback without any issues.

        Reply
      2. Prabhat

        No problems at all in using this RBL value plus Bajaj Finserv co-branded credit card for fuel upto ₹2500 a month.

        You get to accrue flat 250 cashback in your statement every month upto ₹2500 spent on fuel. It keeps adding and you can redeem all this cashback for a statement credit in multiples of 1000. So you need to have atleast a total of 1000 cashbacl collected to redeem it for 1000 statement credit.

        This isn’t a problem at all for me, I accrue 3000 cashback (250×12) and redeem it when the annual fee of ₹500+90GST hits the account. Can get an annual fee waiver of that too upon spending ₹1Lakh annually, but I do away with that since there are better cards to put that spend on. It still gives me a benefit of ₹2410 on annual fuel spend of ₹30000 netting in actual returns of 8%. It’s an amazing card for fuel spends. I’ve always wondered why this card is not spoken of anywhere. Trust me, Indian Oil Citi, SBI BPCL, Indian Oil Axis or any other fuel cards in India are absolutely shitty.

        For fuel spends in India, this should be followed:-

        1. First use this RBL card (up till 2500/month)

        2. Move to AMEX Platinum Charge post fuel spends of 2500/month

        3. If you exhaust this limit too (which is not possible for the average person, if not in a business related to high fuel spends), then move on to SCB ultimate. But there would only be handful people wanting to reach this.

        Note:- I can redeem every time I hit 1000 cashback, but I prefer to collecting it and redeeming it at the end of the year or when the renewal is nearby.

        Once this monthly limit of ₹2500 is exhausted, I move to SCB Ultimate only. But now with this AMEX offer, my second card for fuel spends (once I hit my monthly ₹2500 limit on RBL card) will be AMEX Platinum Charge.

        Reply
    2. Rushabh

      Can we get these cards without FD? I tried to apply online and it forces for FD. I have good salary and score, any suggestions on how to get this card unsecured?

      Reply
  4. Sanjay

    Just want to know if BOB Eterna + Paytm [4.25% Cashback] works for everyone for fuel spends?

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      It does. But Eterna didn’t give me points on Paytm spend few months back. Though heard from a few that they’re giving points as of May 2021. So there’s a bit of risk with it.

      Reply
  5. AskMe-DB

    In my opinion the best combination for fuel spend would be using Mobikwik and using Amex card to load the wallet.

    For past few months Mobikwik has been running 10% cashback scheme for 1st transaction of the month Rs. 100 max.
    after that use 5% supercash max Rs. 200.
    Add to it the Amex reward points return – Gold charge and MRCC. Depends on what fee structure you have.

    If you have a Gold charge and fee gets reversed every year, plus MRCC LTF; then this would be better than any other combination

    Reply
  6. Mahesh S. Panicker

    SCB Super Value Titanium would give you a 4 percent cashback plus 1 percent surcharge reversal on fuel transactions up to 4000 a month. The best thing about it is that you don’t have to bother about finding particular provider’s as it works with all. One little irritant is that you have a transaction limit of 2000 to be eligible for the cashback. My idea is that I would use my Amex MRCC or RBL Monthly Treats with a minimum monthly transaction requirement of 3000 for fee waver and unlocking of other cashbacks for any additional fuel transactions in a month. MRCC I can meet one or 2 1500 bonus point transaction requirement. Paytm has become more or less useless for fuel transactions with their wallet load charges Amazon Pay or Mobikwik are not that much accepted. Will have to try Phonepe, was told that on transacting to business accounts, you can transact with the wallet balance. Would add value to both MRCC and even RBL as they both provide reward points for wallet loads and Phonepe has no nonsense of charges for wallet loads from credit cards.
    By the way Siddharth, I haven’t seen you engaging much with Bajaj cards. Would be interested to get your perspective on the Value Plus card in particular. I was offered a preapproved Bajaj Platinum card as I already have an RBL card, didn’t feel it worthwhile at that time, but this card does sound interesting.

    Reply
  7. Ravikumar U

    I use AMEX MRCC and Gold charge card through PhonePe at fuel stations. Surcharge was not levied this way till now on my transactions.

    Reply
  8. Sagar

    Prabhat,
    Thanks for your inputs. Its a wonderful card: RBL Travel Easy credit card. However, they increased the fees to 999+GST i.e 1080. So benefit is 4.7% cashback on spending 30,000 per year on Fuel .
    2500-1080 = 1420. So 1420/30000 = 4.7%

    Reply
    1. Prabhat

      This is for the Travel Easy variant. This gives 10% cashback upto 400₹.

      So if you transact for fuel spends of upto 48000/year (4000 each month), you get 400×12=4800₹ cashback.

      Adjust the fees of ₹ 1178.82 (999+GST)
      Makes it 3621.18/48000=7.5%

      The one you’re talking about is the value plus card that comes at an annual fee of 499+gst.

      Returns on this are still 8%, even after paying the annual fee.

      Reply
  9. Sudhindra Kamath

    I started with SBI BPCL card a year ago. It gives decent 3.25% value back. One good thing about this card is there’s no minimum amount like Rs. 500 to get points. Even if you swipe for Rs. 100 you get the 13x points and surcharge waiver. Sometimes there was issue of points not getting posted and surcharge waiver. Just send a mail to customer care mentioning the transaction details and the issue will be sorted within 1 week. 7 months back i applied for the ICICI HPCL Amex card. It give 2.5% cash back and 6 points for every 100 spent at HPCL pump. Thats equal to 4% value back. The only issue with this card is the card must be swipped only in ICICI swipe machine to get the cashback. This is one of the big downsides of this card. Most of HPCL pumps in my area use either PineLabs or AGS swipe machines. Only 1 pump has ICICI swipe machine. So this card is only usable if the pump has ICICI swipe machine. Also the minimum amount to get cashback is Rs. 500. 2 months back I got the Standard Chartered super value titanium card which is one of the best cards for fuel in my opinion. It gives 4% cashback at any petrol pump without any issues. Minimum amount for this card is Rs.500. Redemption wise standard chartered card will be the best. Cashback can be redeemed as statement credit. Next best card is HPCL Amex. 2.5% cashback is posted as statement credit and 6 points are of payback which can be easily redeemed for amazon vouchers. SBI BPCL would be least friendly in terms of redemption. The points are redeemed directly against fuel in multiples of Rs. 500. The only issue is there are about 9 BPCL station in my area and only 1 station has the swipe machine which is used to redeem the points.

    Reply
  10. ka

    Does fuel spends on all amex cards (not just platinum) earn base points? I was under the impression that fuel spends on amex do not earn any points.

    Reply
  11. Navneet

    Amex has gone from bad to verse. My credit limit reduced by 1.4 lakh, my friend’s new card credit limit reduced by 40% after the very first spend, my other three friend’s card suspended and for one person, the gold card limit set at 26k.
    We are talking about 6 people I know off all facing such cohesive treatment. No wonder it has been banned by RBI.

    Reply
  12. Gautam Garg

    This is a much welcomed feature and as almost never have I faced any acceptance issues at HPCL fuel stations, I have been using it extensively.

    Reply

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