The main benefit of the Amex Cash Magnet Card is the cash back rewards you can earn on every purchase without paying an annual fee. The card also comes with some travel, entertainment and Amex-specific benefits that other cash back cards may not have. For example, all personal U.S. American Express cards offer a complimentary ShopRunner membership (enrollment required).
Intro APR on purchases
The Amex Cash Magnet Card offers a 0 percent intro purchase APR period for the first 15 months of having the card. After that, the APR is a 18.99 percent to 29.99 percent variable APR based on creditworthiness.
Pay It Plan It®
The American Express Pay It Plan It® feature enables cardholders to select qualifying purchases to pay off over a fixed time period for a set monthly fee, which could be useful if you want to finance a large purchase while minimizing extra charges.
Amex Offers
American Express also gets you access to Amex Offers, a program that features deals on select purchases, including extra discounts or rewards on popular retailer purchases and/or travel and dining purchases. Amex Offers won’t make you bundles of cash back, but you can expect to occasionally see offers like 10 percent back on GrubHub purchases (usually with a rewards spending cap, like up to $75).
Travel benefits
The Amex Cash Magnet Card provides car rental loss and damage insurance. When you use your card to pay for the entire rental and reject the collision damage waiver with the rental car company, you can be covered for theft or damage to a rental vehicle in a covered location.
The card also provides access to the Global Assist Hotline, which provides 24/7 access to financial, medical, legal and emergency assistance services, like missing luggage assistance and passport replacement.
American Express Experiences
Thanks to American Express’ partnership with Ticketmaster and other programs, cardmembers can use the American Express Experiences program to obtain access to exclusive ticket presales and cardholder-only events, like Broadway shows, concerts, sporting events and family events.
Rates and fees
The Amex Cash Magnet Card has no annual fee. There’s a relatively standard 0 percent intro APR period on purchases for the first 15 months, after which the card’s ongoing APR of 18.99 percent to 29.99 percent variable applies, based on your creditworthiness. After the intro APR period ends, the lower end of its ongoing APR is slightly under the current average interest rate.
The APR for cash advances is 29.99 percent variable and the penalty APR is 29.99 percent variable. The cash advance fee is either 5 percent of the cash advance amount or $10, whatever’s higher. There’s also a foreign transaction fee of 2.7 percent of each transaction, making this a less-than-ideal option if you need a card to use while traveling abroad. Penalty fees are up to $40 for late payments and returned payments.