American Express Gold Card Referral

[AinT]

Posting this as an experiment with Ben’s permission!

I have a referral link for an Amex Gold Card.

Conditions are:

You get the first year free ~¥30,000 value and up to 7,000 bonus points if you meet certain spending conditions.

I get 10,000 points for referring you.

The Amex Gold card comes with a lot of great perks which you can check out on the American Express Japan website. Additionally it is reasonably easy to get approved assuming you have a stable job and a salary of around 400万円 or over per year.

As a warning this is a charge card, not a credit card, so no ability to carry a balance, you have to pay it off 100% every month. (This is a good thing!)

If you are interested in applying please send me a private message and I’ll share the link with you.

[captainspoke]

First year free, but then I read: 年会費29,000円+消費税.

Can you sign up, use it for a while, and then easily quit just before that fee hits?

[AinT]

I know it works that way in America, I’d assume it’s the same here but I can’t say for certain.

[ricardo]

When I lived in the UK I had an Amex Platinum Card (not available in Japan). It was worth the membership fee for the travel insurance benefits alone. Plus you could exchange Amex points into other schemes (e.g. SPG, Hilton, airlines etc).

Not sure the Japanese Amex Gold Card is such a good deal.

It used to be something of a status symbol, but now that most countries (and soon Japan) use Apple Pay or similar no-one actually sees your card!

[AinT]

Platinum is actually available by application here now too but it has a comical 130,000 per year fee...

[ricardo]

Really? What do you get for the money? Comprehensive travel insurance, Priority Pass? Might not be comical for a frequent traveller

[AinT]

Gold and Platinum both come with Priority Pass, very good travel insurance and free bag delivery to and from the airport.
Platinum includes hotel status, one free night at a brand hotel per year and a higher class of Priority Pass I think.

I don't travel enough to justify it but I guess it's not too crazy if you would actually make use of it.

[captainspoke]

I get travel insurance (including for car rental) on another card that is free.

One aspect of points programs that I don't care for is that users seem to naturally spend more than they would otherwise--if they were just using cash, or not trying to gain points.

Isn't there some discussion elsewhere about eliminating fixed expenses?



Separate from this Amex offer: (NYT)

Why Rewards for Loyal Spenders Are ‘a Honey Pot for Hackers’

Daniel Najera’s Hilton Honors account was hacked, with all 80,000 points spent at Amazon. “It kind of makes you wonder whether you still want to do this, whether it’s safe,” he said of the loyalty program.CreditCreditBrittany Greeson for The New York Times
By Tiffany Hsu
May 11, 2019

The punch cards stuffed in your wallet know next to nothing about you, except maybe how many frozen yogurts you still need to buy to get a free one.

But loyalty programs, as they shift from paper and plastic to apps and websites, are increasingly tracking a currency that can be more valuable than how much you spend: personal data. As a result, the programs know things about you that some of your friends may not, like your favorite flavor (mango), when your cravings strike (early afternoon) and how you pay (with your Visa), in addition to billing details and contact information.

Hackers are in close pursuit.

One loyalty-fraud prevention group estimates, conservatively, that $1 billion a year is lost to crime related to the programs. As a share of fraud not involving a physical payment card, such schemes more than doubled from 2017 to 2018, according to the Javelin Strategy & Research firm.

Some criminals use stolen credentials to impersonate customers, breach loyalty profiles and then tap into separate accounts. Others deplete balances or sell points on dark web marketplaces. One hacked Southwest Airlines rewards account with at least 50,000 miles was advertised for $98.88, according to the cloud security company Armor.

In a data breach revealed last year as one of the largest ever, thieves attacked Marriott’s Starwood unit, stealing the personal information — including five million unencrypted passport numbers — of more than 350 million customers and Starwood Preferred Guest members. Data stored in Dunkin’ Donuts’ DD Perks program was also exposed in an attack disclosed last year.

This year, several McDonald’s customers in Canada complained that criminals had breached their accounts on the chain’s loyalty app, My McD’s, and placed unauthorized orders, some totaling more than $1,000. A McDonald’s spokesman said that the company was aware of “some isolated incidents” involving fraudulent purchases but was “confident in the security of the app.”

Loyalty programs are “almost a honey pot for hackers,” said Kevin Lee, a risk expert for the digital security firm Sift. They tend to be, he said, “the path of least resistance”: easy to sign up for, shielded by flimsy passwords and often neglected by users. The programs, and their appetite for data, have grown, but security has not kept pace.

Daniel Najera was hit twice.

On April 9, he received a series of emails about his Hilton Honors account. Within an hour, the account had been linked to Amazon and all 80,000 of his Hilton points had been used to make purchases.

He said he had not taken those steps, and he feared that his Hilton account information, including his credit card number, might have been stolen.

Hilton said it had “the appropriate security and fraud protection measures in place.” The company also said it had reinstated Mr. Najera’s points after he reported the intrusion.

Mr. Najera, a chef who lives in Saginaw, Mich., said something similar had happened to his Buffalo Wild Wings loyalty account earlier this year. Signing into the app to participate in a March Madness contest, he saw that all 9,700 of his points had been spent in Fresno, Calif.

Alison Glenn, a spokeswoman for the chain, said it was aware of “a small number of robotic attempts to hack passwords” that appeared to have failed. Mr. Najera said the company had replaced his points.

“It kind of makes you wonder whether you still want to do this, whether it’s safe,” he said. “These programs try to get you to put all this information in there, and it’s worrisome.”

There are at least 3.8 billion rewards memberships in the United States, more than 10 per consumer, according to research from LoyaltyOne, a loyalty advisory company.

Companies use the programs to tailor deals and services to faithful patrons willing to divulge birth dates, payment card numbers, location data — even shoe sizes and favorite vacation spots. The information is analyzed for insight into how to appeal to customers individually to encourage even more spending.

In the past year, Exxon Mobil, PetSmart, Victoria’s Secret and Uber have started or revamped loyalty programs. Hospitals, utilities, wineries and publishing houses are experimenting. Jaguar Land Rover, in a test, rewards drivers with cryptocurrency if they enable data-transmission technology in their cars.

Rewards memberships have become “the single best source of individual customer data relevant to developing personalized marketing,” said Thomas O’Toole, executive director of the Kellogg School of Management’s data analytics program at Northwestern University.

“That’s where the ballgame is heading,” he said.

It’s not hard to see why, given how lucrative loyalty can be. Before Nordstrom started its Nordy Club last fall, the 10 million members of the program’s previous incarnation outspent nonmembers four to one, the retailer said.

The 10-year-old rewards program at Starbucks accounts for 40 percent of purchases at the company’s United States stores, and membership has surged more than 25 percent in the past two years. Last month, Starbucks added tiers of rewards that can be redeemed more quickly than in the past. Members may receive personalized ordering suggestions, like cold brew infused with nitrogen bubbles for customers known to drink the regular version.

Some brands have hooked their rewards to other companies. Walgreens offers points to shoppers who connect their accounts to Fitbit fitness trackers. In March, Chipotle briefly promoted a new loyalty program with cash prizes for consumers who also used the social payments app Venmo. Participants submitted the phone number associated with their Venmo accounts on a website created by Chipotle.

Companies are collecting so much data that it is often “more than they can actually use,” said Emily Collins, an analyst with Forrester Research.

“They’ve got oceans of data and puddles of insight,” she said.

As consumers hand over more data, many of them fail to monitor their accounts closely. More than half of the rewards memberships in the United States are inactive, and more than $100 billion a year in rewards points go unredeemed, according to the marketing firm Bond Brand Loyalty.

Tate Holcombe, a photographer in Arlington, Va., said he was usually “pretty religious about changing passwords and multiple verifications,” especially for accounts linked to payment data. With rewards programs, he was much more lax.

“Of course, that’s the one place I got hacked,” he said.

On March 23, Mr. Holcombe woke up at home to a 3 a.m. notification from his Domino’s loyalty account: His pizza was ready for pickup in Santa Clarita, Calif.

Someone had hacked his profile and used a coupon for a free pizza, he said. Personal details, like his phone number and address, had been overwritten with gibberish. When he complained, the company replaced his coupon.

Jenny Fouracre, a Domino’s spokeswoman, said the chain had “significant controls around the protection of loyalty accounts.” Although recycling a password across multiple accounts makes many customers vulnerable, she said, “information secured by us has never been compromised.”

After experiencing repeated attacks, credit card companies and banks “have battened down the hatches” and become harder to breach, said Marti Beller, the president of Kobie Marketing, which designs rewards systems. She said loyalty programs needed to do the same because “they have real currencies with real values.”

Some brands are strengthening their defenses with stricter login requirements like two-factor authentication and facial recognition. McDonald’s said its app replaced payment card information with a series of randomly generated numbers that protect accounts from data theft, but not from fraudulent purchases.

Many companies are also hiring digital security firms like Sift.

About 34,000 websites and apps use the company’s services. Sift has access to troves of data its clients collect on loyalty programs and can track the individual customers’ behavioral patterns across multiple accounts, analyzing them for possible fraud.

It is data protection fueled by data. When someone orders a latte from a cafe chain’s app, Sift can tell that the person is in New York using the same iPhone linked to past purchases. If, two minutes later, a clothing store account registered to the same person shows activity from an Android phone in Florida, Sift flags the transaction as suspicious.

Sift’s omniscience might feel invasive, as if consumers were pledging loyalty at the expense of privacy. But to security experts like Mr. Lee, the trade-off could be worse.

“Fraudsters are collaborating on the dark web about the different ways to exploit loyalty programs,” he said. “We’re leveling the playing field on the other side.”

[AinT]

Personally I don't think I spend just to get points but I certainly spend on different cards to maximize the benefits. For example I buy as much as I can through Amazon using their credit card to get the 2.5% back as points, I don't think I'm spending more than I would be without a points system but I am definitely shifting more of my spending to Amazon because of it.

[Snowmonkey]

I get travel insurance (including for car rental) on another card that is free.

Captainspoke, apologies for dragging up a post from nearly two years ago but I'm very much interested to know what credit card you have that offers this...for when travel is possible again of course.