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So I have two cards with AMEX. I have the Green Card and the BCE. My limit for the BCE is low , sitting at $1,000. So I thought my limit for the Green Card would be the same, right? Not so much true! I recently needed to make a purchase for $1,200 so I wanted to make sure I would get approved when making the purchase.
This is where I used the ' Check Spending Ability' Button to check for that .. I punched in $1,200 and I was approved .. ! So I made the purchase the next day ...!
This is strange and doesn't make sense to me ... Any way to know what's the actual spending limit on a charge card?
@altayar wrote:So I have two cards with AMEX. I have the Green Card and the BCE. My limit for the BCE is low , sitting at $1,000. So I thought my limit for the Green Card would be the same, right? Not so much true! I recently needed to make a purchase for $1,200 so I wanted to make sure I would get approved when making the purchase.
This is where I used the ' Check Spending Ability' Button to check for that .. I punched in $1,200 and I was approved .. ! So I made the purchase the next day ...!
This is strange and doesn't make sense to me ... Any way to know what's the actual spending limit on a charge card?
It actually makes a lot of sense. Amex's charge cards are for "spend centric" uses. Typically where people are on expense accounts, run up large bills, and PIF the next month. Amex securitizes their "credit card" line where people carry a balance and they limit that portfolio exposure to 35k per. Charge cards, OTOH, often are used to charge very high amounts. How high depends on your spending pattern and how it compares to others in Amex's history. Are they similar to those that have defaulted or similar to those that just spend a lot. One of the interesting implications of those that spend a lot but PIF is that they usually have the income to support occasional very large purchases.
If you carry a balance on one of their credit cards you will likely see much reduced limits on their charge cards. Otherwise you will likely be able to charge fairly substantial amounts on the charge cards in comparison to credit cards. Amex has a very different model from their competitors.
This makes sense because a charge card is paid off every month. So a credit limit is the amount they think you can reliably carry over time (money you presumably don't have, or you wouldn't carry a balance) vs a charge card the amount you might reasonably have on hand. My Amex revolver has a limit of $1000 and I have made several purchases on my Zync in excess of $10,000. As to how to know your limit, when you hit the check spending button and it says no, you'll know. However, I wouldn't do it until you actually are planning a larger purchase.
@jsickz32 wrote:
Weird i have same cards but my limit in the bce is 2.5k but the my green was declined when my balance was 967.30 and was trying to charge 100 more on it so im guessing my limit is 1000 on the green for now.
depends alot on spending habbits and salary if you always spend less than $250 a month, they may not approve over a $1000 if you have a low income or very new with AMEX, its hard to know exactly what your limits are.
My average spending per month is about $50 .. It's strange they'd approve me for a $1,200 purchase!
@jamesdwi wrote:
@jsickz32 wrote:
Weird i have same cards but my limit in the bce is 2.5k but the my green was declined when my balance was 967.30 and was trying to charge 100 more on it so im guessing my limit is 1000 on the green for now.depends alot on spending habbits and salary if you always spend less than $250 a month, they may not approve over a $1000 if you have a low income or very new with AMEX, its hard to know exactly what your limits are.
@jsickz32 wrote:
Both my cards just turned one month old this past 6th. I ran 1300 thru the bce in 2 weeks to get the $150, pif that same week and started using my green right away. I think its because i opened a lot of accounts recently and that my account is new that they starting me with a low limit.
I got my card in Feb... my limit is over $5700 on my Zync. I don't know how high it goes. I really like the flexibility to spend on this card what you need on any given month. my gross income is 121k, and I do use it some for business expenses, which are reimbursed by my employer. I'd love to add a business charge card to my portfolio, but my husband doesn't think I need it. I do have a side business, rental property, which grosses about 26k per year
My YTD spending on the card is:
Payments -22,688.33
How does the "check spending limit" button work? I just received my Zync today & was curious as to what my internal spending limit is so I put in $2,000 & it was approved, then I put in $3,000 & was approved, I tried $4,000 but it said something along the lines of not being able to process that request online for security measures & I should call inorder to process the request. i just figured that meant my lnt limit was somewhere b/w $3000-$4000, so I tried $3,500 & got the same msg. So I figured my limit was $3,000 since that request was approved before but when I tried $3,000 again I got the msg about not bring able to approve the request online. Did I just trigger a FR or is the system set up not to approve more than 2 requests a day? I don't actually plan on charging that much on the Zync anyway, I just wanted to know what my starting internal limit was.
You probably didn't trigger a FR, the one FR I heard of being triggered recently by a spending test, was done testing spending followed by a greater than $1000 purchase of jewelery. Basically you haven't triggered it yet, but be careful what you purchase next, a normal purchase, dinner out, gasoline are probably fine. Jewelery or Cash equivalents probably should be avoided for a while.
When I got mine I just ran my typical expenses through the card, then before I paid my bill, I did a test with 1k at first then I increase my value each month my last test was for 3k with $500 balance showing and the test was approved, Then to ease any anxiety I may of triggered I PIF surely a spending test followed by PIF shouldn't cause any issues especially since I didn't follow up the test with an unusual purchase.