LondonElite

I have a UK Platinum card and travel extensively in Europe, much of which is in Germany. I'm growing a bit tired of the FX charges and am considering applying for either a Platinum Intl EUR card or a German Platinum card.

The Intl EUR card seems to be €50 cheaper pa (€550 v €600 for the German card) and come with more or less the same package of benefits. I assume I can merge the MR account with my existing UK account. Going this route everything comes to one (UK) address.

The German Platinum card, on the other hand, will give me targeted offers for Germany. The downside is that it comes to a German address (which I can provide). A temporary move to Germany in the future is a possibility which may make this the more obvious choice.

Is there any benefit either way that I'm overlooking?

Thanks

mia

No, but you should be able to transfer points between the accounts once per 12 months at the GBP/EUR exchange rate. This is not a published feature, and you may encounter individuals who will tell you that it cannot be done. The transfers are manual, slow, and if I recall correctly managed by an Amex office in South America.

Substantial discussion in this dated thread with obsolete title:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...rds-point.html

Markonen

If your intent is simply to have an Euro-denominated card and transfer any MR earnings once a year to your UK (GBP) MR account, I'd recommend the International Currency Card since it's serviced from the UK, in English, and is likely to be much less hassle.

However, is there a reason you're looking at the Platinum card even though you already have one? It would seem to me that even the Green ICC card would be perfectly fine for your goals since you already have the Platinum benefits.

LondonElite

Thanks for the suggestions. The MR transfer benefit is not one I was aware of. That said, I'm less concerned about MR points; I have plenty of them and if they happen to accrue in different accounts, so be it.

My inclination is to go with the German card because I may move there for a while and can probably make better use of the targeted features (and benefits), which the ICC won't have. Managing it online (which I would have to do in the case of the UK card(s) when/if I move) is pretty easy. I suppose there are no other features which I've missed, so will probably go this route.

mia

Membership Rewards transfer partners and ratios are different for each program. In this Wikipost we have links to both the International Euro and German programs:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showwiki.php?t=1646902

It looks as if the International card airline transfer ratio is typically 3:2, with some 1:1, while the German transfer ratio is typically 5:4.