I have written extensively about the new American Express Cobalt Card and have personally been using it in every possible situation due to its tremendous category multipliers which include 5x on grocery, dining and food delivery services.
If you don’t have this card already, I would encourage you to get it because it has such great potential as a transfer option to SPG points. If you aren’t aware you can receive $50 cash back for an approved application through Great Canadian Rebates, which greatly offsets the $10/month fee.
Credit vs Charge Card
What you may not have realized is that the Cobalt Card is a credit card rather than a charge card. Most American Express cards are considered charge cards, which means that the amount on the card must be paid off each month in full or you face a very steep interest charge of up to 30%. Compare that to a credit card that allows you to make a minimum monthly payment as low as $10/month (depending on your balance).
Most of the AMEX cards that are of interest to Travel Hackers like you and I are charge cards like the Gold Personal, the Gold Business, the Platinum Personal and the Platinum Business. The two credit cards that most Travel Hackers are interested in are the SPG Personal and SPG Business cards. And now of course, you can add the Cobalt card to the mix.
Credit Transfer
When I was approved for the Cobalt card, they only gave me a paltry $5,800 credit limit, which was quite minuscule compared to my other limits. When I called in to inquire about a credit limit increase, I was told that I would have to wait at least 6 months before I could be approved for a credit limit increase.
Due to the fact that I planned on using the card for most of my purchases including some fairly significant ones in the next few months, I asked if it was possible to move some of my credit limit from my SPG card over to the Cobalt.
Much to my delight, they were able to move over as much as I wanted instantly. I ended up moving over about $13,000 of credit limit over from my SPG card to give me a total available credit of almost $19,000.
Conclusion
With the Cobalt card being a credit card within the American Express portfolio, you can transfer credit limits between cards with a phone call to American Express’ Customer Service line. The transfer is instant and very easy to do, so if you are like me and want to use the Cobalt for large purchases, don’t forget about this handy option to quickly increase your credit limit.
