According to ISSAC in the US Credit Card 101 Knowledge Planet group, AMEX has sent out another round of targeted Pay Over Time offers worth 20,000 Membership Rewards points over the past couple of days, visible after login. Remember to turn this feature off again after the points post and wait for the next targeted round. During the Knowledge Planet trial period, you can still join at the discounted price of ￥129 if you're interested—there’s a lot of good stuff inside.

Also, you can check under AMEX Offers to see whether it shows up there.

Or it may appear in the sidebar.

If you still haven’t received it, it may be worth turning off Pay Over Time on all your cards and then waiting.

What Is the Pay Over Time Offer?

AMEX often sends Pay Over Time enrollment bonuses to Charge Card holders. Usually, you get Membership Rewards points just for enrolling. After you enroll, you do not need to do anything else—you do not need to pay interest or carry a balance. You can simply collect the 10,000-point bonus.

Eligible cards include:

How to Turn Off Pay Over Time

If you haven’t been targeted for a long time, you should definitely turn off Pay Over Time and then wait. Also, some business cards may be automatically enrolled in Pay Over Time, so it’s a good idea to turn it off first regardless.

Here are the steps:

  • Manage Pay Over Time link (login required)
  • Once inside, you can see the status for each of your cards. Be sure to switch between cards and turn it off for every eligible charge card.
  • It may take some time for the change to process.

Surprisingly, just a few days after turning it off, a popup appeared when logging in to AMEX offering a bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points. Highly recommended to give this a try.

  • Promo popup on the login homepage
  • Click activate to see the offer details. In short, you do not need to do anything else—just activate it. My plan is to turn it off again after getting the bonus and then wait for the next offer.

How to Get the 10,000-Point Offer

At the moment, this 10,000 Membership Rewards point offer is targeted, and only AMEX Charge Cards are eligible. Here are a few ways to check whether you have it:

  • AMEX account: Log in to your account. A popup may appear, or the offer may show under AMEX Offers.
  • Email and mail: Keep an eye on your email inbox and physical mail, since these offers may be sent that way.
  • Call in: Sometimes the 10,000-point offer comes with a promo code. You can call 866-280-0566 and provide someone else’s code to see whether you are eligible.
  • Try a generic link: You can use a link someone else received and log in to your own account to see whether you qualify. See the analysis below.

Some Older Offer Links

Recently, LD also received a Pay Over Time offer for 10,000 points. The enrollment link was:

  • americanexpress.com/ExPOenroll85
  • After opening the link above, check whether the offer page shows a 10,000 Membership bonus. If it does, congratulations—go ahead and enroll.
  • If it looks like this instead, do not enroll. Wait for the next link or for an offer sent directly to you:

Here are some other older links:

Analysis of Generic Links

From the links above, it looks like these links may follow the format americanexpress.com/ExPOenroll + some number, for example:

Link Testing

I tried a few combinations, and there were three possible outcomes:

  • Immediate error page: Most likely AMEX never used that link.
  • Login page appears, but no offer shows up afterward:
  • Login page appears, and after login it says you were not targeted:
  • Login page appears, and after login the offer is available:

My Guess

  • Each time, AMEX releases some new offer links with different last two digits. These links appear to correspond to certain cards, and only targeted users can see the offer after logging in.
  • Each link may correspond to a certain card type. For example, 85 might be for Platinum cards, so if I log in with a Gold card, I may not see the offer.
  • If you try enough number combinations, you may find an offer link for a card that was targeted to you—but it is also possible that you simply were not targeted at all.

If you have any test results, feel free to leave a comment and share.

AMEX Pay Over Time Basics

Pay Over Time is a payment feature unique to AMEX Charge Cards (Platinum, Premier Gold Rewards, Gold, Green). After enrolling, these Charge Cards gain the ability to carry a balance. In other words, once your statement closes, your balance does not have to be paid in full that month. You can keep part of it on the card by paying interest. If you do not use Pay Over Time, then the balance on a Charge Card is generally expected to be paid in full; otherwise, you could be charged a late fee and high interest.

Pay Over Time has several forms:

If you want to learn more, see the official explanation:

Of course, for those of us who always pay after the statement closes and never pay interest to the bank, this feature itself is not particularly useful. The bonus is the real reason to care.