When Do You Pay Your Amex Charge Card Bill?

How do you have a credit limit on your Charge Card?

Business Amex charge cards actually allow for a fixed credit line. Personal ones don't. I found that out when my monthly spending limit on the Business charge fluctuated so badly that I requested a clarification, so they gave me a credit line. Now, when I applied for a Corporate charge, they also assigned a credit line to it, this time linked to the business revenues from the previous year.

When you are applying for a new credit card or mortgage or the like do creditors get your current credit balances as of the actual day they submit their inquiry or do they only get the credit balances as of the last statement closing date, which may have been as much as 30 days earlier? If the latter, then it would make sense to pay the full balance due on the exact statement closing date so that your new statement balance the next day is always $0. If the former, then you would be better off paying your balance in full right before applying for a new card, loan, etc., or at least making periodic payments during the statment period to make sure the balance never gets too high at any time. Given the earlier post about very low bank interest rates making interest earned a non-issue the above strategy choices seem to make sense unless you are talking about very large credit account balances where even a very low bank interest rate could make it worthwhile to hold off paying your credit card bills until the payment due date.

So my statement (the pdf I downloaded from the AMEX website) says "Please Pay By 03/18/10", but when I go online to schedule my payment, it says "Payment Due Sun, Mar 28".

So what is my payment due date?

Do you have a charge card (i. e. Zync, Green, Gold, Platinum or Centurion) or a credit card?

It is a Charge Card. Premier Gold Rewards.

You could call 800-327-2177 and ask. However, I'd either pay on the earlier date, or keep a screen shot of the online page showing the later date (this is easy to do on a Macintosh but I'm not sure how you'd do it using Windows - anyone?)

The threads mia pointed you to will answer your question, but there are a lot of wrong answers in there as well. The appropriate answer is that, while AMEX does print a "pay by" date that is roughly 2 weeks after the statement close date and the online pay by date is a few days later still, probably to account for the time it would take to be delivered to them by mail, you actually have until the next statement prints to pay your balance in full. If possible, however, I would pay by their recommended dates, as this likely pleases them.

Yes, this is one of the rather deceptive AmEx things..... in big letters on the bill is the "please pay by" date......which is NOT the "due date".

When I phoned AmEx, (June 1009) I learned the "please pay by" date is just a suggestion of when to mail a check so it reaches AmEx in time.......but if you mail on that date and it does NOT reach AmEx by the actual(hidden) "due date", Amex will still charge penalties, interest, etc.

Much better is Discover card, which you can set to automatically pay the credit card bill from the bank account of your choice......right on the actual, final "due date"!

Doesn't AMEX offer the "autopay" feature to accomplish exactly the same thing?

Sortof. With AmEx you can only schedule payments on the offered pay date. That isn't necessarily the same as the actual due date. I'm pretty sure they don't let you schedule payments after that. At least in the past it wasn't possible. I have not bothered recently.

All AMEX Charge cards are 30 day accounts.

As long as AMEX receives payment in full on or before the closing date of your next billing cycle, your payment is on time. Period.

If you want to pay automatically each month, then the first month your bill is paid early. Which means you will not have the full 30 day grace period, but only for the first month you sign up for auto-pay. After that, you will still have the 30 day grace period because your auto-draft will happen the same time each month.

Always ignore the "Due Date" on AMEX charge cards. Make sure you know your "Closing Date" and follow that each month. If you get this wrong, then your payment will be late, and you will have violated your AMEX CC agreement.

Also, if you wait until the exact closing date to pay, and the website is down, or the phone system is down, you will still be in violation of your CC agreement, since the T&C excludes such technical issues as valid reasons for paying late.

PS - You do not have to wait an hour after you eat to go swimming. And always wear your seat belt.

^^^^Well I guess that is final. Thanks

IMO, this is one of the most confusing things about Amex. I had to call several times to get a straight answer on why 2 due dates were showing.

One additional note, if you charge a significantly higher than average amount in a month, and do not pay by the first due date, Amex begins to call you, and may even suspend charging on the charge card, as well as other cards on the account. As soon as I paid the bill, however, access to all cards was restored immediately

I always pay before the "pay by" date shown on the statement, simply because I can't stand having outstanding debts, but, furthermore, because I don't want to "guess" as to what's early/acceptable/late. This puts me on a 30-day schedule so I don't really feel like I'm paying too early... If I always waited until the very last minute, I'd still be on a 30-day cycle.