The American Express Black Card is an invite-only ultra-wealthy credit card meant for lavish big spending celebrities.
It’s a card that proudly boasts a $10,000 initiation fee alongside a $5,000 annual fee.
You might have also heard about the ridiculous benefits that this card offers, including the best worldwide personal assistance program where you can get exclusive reservations, gift delivery anywhere in the world, and special access to services that you could never get anywhere else.
Anyways this card is pretty wild, and I would consider this to be like the legendary Ho- Oh from Pokémon of the credit card world. It’s very rare and exclusive, and whoever has one means business.
So, let’s imagine you would be ok with paying $15,000 in fees for the first year of card ownership. How do you even get it? Do you apply for it just like any other credit card?
Don’t get me wrong, having an American Express Black Card is definitely hard, but it’s not impossible.
So here are the four steps on what you need to do to get an American Express Black Card:
STEP #1
Be a good-standing cardholder with American Express.
- Not blacklisted, and no missed payments
- Minimum of 1 year being an American Express card holder
STEP #2
Make sure to update your income stated on your American Express personal account.
To do this on your Account, go to “Account Services,” then go to the bottom of it then click on “Update Income.” On this page, you can confirm how much your income is.
A lot of people tend to exaggerate their income, but when it comes to American Express, it would be best not to mess around because they will most likely try to verify this information which is called a ‘Financial Review’.
I’ve been hit with a Financial Review before. This is when I decide to check my spending power. I set my limit. I also put down a higher income than it was previously and then through the audit of that, I had to send them bank account statements, tax returns, and multiple pieces of financial proof.
The reason why this is significant is that under the ‘Confirm Your Income’ page, you’ll notice that they wrote:
I believe that if you are putting down a certain income level, that would automatically trigger the algorithm to place you in a category where you are a possible candidate for getting invited to this card.
STEP #3
Meet the minimum required spend for Centurion Card
Although American Express doesn’t have an official post stating a spending threshold, there is indeed one. To get invited to this card, you’ll need to spend at least $250,000 in purchases across all your American Express accounts.
There are 2 versions of the Centurion Card:1. Personal2. Business
As we cruise through the year 2023, I need to mention that many rules have changed. This includes how American Express has decided to invite new folks, and it seems like data points from current American Express Black Card holders are showing something completely different.
As an example, there used to be a ton of data points where people spent close to $250,000 across all of their accounts. If you have Personal Gold, Business Platinum, and Personal Platinum, you could add all those up, and if it totaled up to nearly $250,000, you are likely to get an invitation.
I’ve seen stories where people spend $500,000 or more on a single card for a multiple-year period of 2-3 years, and they still don’t get invited.
Out of all the data points that I’ve gathered, none of these is officiated. I’d say the rough estimate is that you’d still want to spend at least $250,000 but it looks like for this year 2023, if you’re spending around $500,000 and you’re doing consistently for the last 2 to 3 years, you’d have a huge approval chance of getting invited to the card.
On the other hand, if you’re spending on just your business card, this will need a higher spending limit. You would need to spend way more than that, and it looks like some people need to spend at least $1 Million per year, and if you want to have the best chance of getting approved, you have to spend at least $5 Million to $10 Million per year to even be on the radar.
Some posts also indicate that it depends on where you live (like the spending requirement will be more if you’re in big cities full of ultra-rich people like LA or Miami, but could be lower if you live in the middle of nowhere) and what you spend (flights, hotels, luxury goods spend has better odds, especially for the personal one).
STEP #4
If you happen to be a sole peasant like myself and you can’t spend $500,000 in a single year without selling your birthright as a human being, here are some more proactive steps you can take.
TIP #1
Build a relationship with someone inside American Express
Something I did before was I went to an American Express small business event, and I got the contact information from the VP of Loyalty Marketing at AMEX.
I wanted to have internal plugs so I went ahead and traded Instagrams, had a chance to shake hands after that and I even went home with a bunch of swag.
When it comes to getting exclusive invitation access, it’s important to build a relationship and connection through the network that you have.
TIP #2
Get in contact with American Express
The worst that can happen is nothing, but the best-case scenario is they add your account to a list we don’t know about to review your qualifications.
TIP #3
Make a manual invite request
American Express Centurion Card holders have their own dedicated website portal that they can log in to.
By visiting the link, you can put in your first and last name, American Express Card number, and 4-digit security code to be considered for an invitation to US Centurion Membership.
I strongly believe that by having your information in there, you are getting your application seen by someone. Whether it’s the algorithm or if they see something special in your account, they will go ahead and send that offer to you.
Ladies and gents, by reading this blog, I do hope you at least know a bit more about how American Express Black Card works, and I do know that it’s difficult to get invited for this card. Now I will say there are other methods of getting the black card which I can’t talk about in this blog, but maybe one day I will.
In the meantime, if you don’t want to pay $15,000 a year for a card, I HIGHLY recommend looking into the American Express Platinum. It’s $695 but this year, they’ve added so many more benefits.