AMEX Foreign Transactions Average Posting Time?

[Anonymous]

Last week I received a targeted offer from AMEX for the PRG with a 50k reward points SUB for a $2k spend. As I’ll be doing a decent amount of travel this year (including needing to purchase 7-8 airline tickets) I figured I might as well add the card to my wallet, as my first charge card.

As I’ll be heading over to Japan next month I wanted to buy a few things off of Amazon.jp and have it shipped to one of my friends to hold on to until I show up. As far as I can tell, the merchant received the payment and the item has already shipped, however the payment has not shown as pending on my account. Payments I’ve made here in the States both before and after the Amazon purchase have already posted to my account, but the Japanese purchase has yet to even show that it’s pending. Oddly enough however, my Apple Wallet app shows that the money was sent in the transaction history, but nothing on either the AMEX app or website.

Anyone had a similar experience? Every other “International Card” I’ve used (BoA Travel, CSP) post the transactions immediately, but I found a few threads floating around from 5-12 years ago, that say that it can take up to 3 months for them to show up?

Is this normal with AMEX? And if so, and it takes months to post, will this not count as a purchase towards the SUB if it’s posting after the 90 day period?

Any insight would be much appreciated, as I had intended for most of the $2k to be spent in Japan this March, but not if the transactions won’t be posting until June.

[wasCB14]

Foreign transactions do not appear on the "pending" list, but I've never had one that took more than a few days to post.

I think I heard there was some way to find out the USD price of a foreign transaction earlier, but I don't recall.

Anyway, it's normal.

[Anonymous]

“I think I heard there was some way to find out the USD price of a foreign transaction earlier, but I don't recall.”

Thanks for the reply! The USD value does show up in my Apple Wallet transaction history, so maybe that’s the only place? Or did you mean there’s actually some way to check it through AMEX?

[Shadowfactor]

I use my Amex card as much as I can while traveling. Currently overseas right now for 2 months.

They normally take about 2-3 days to show up. As others have said. They don’t show up at all until they actually post. Never had one take longer then 4 days to post, the gas stations down here take the longest to post.

[Schwartzinator]

Let's see, I've purchased a couple different items for my computer direct from Iceland, China, Japan, and most recently Africa and they all posted within 5 days with most posting by the 3rd day. If you do run into problems, point to the transaction date and see if they'll work with you. 

[longtimelurker]

I would be really surprised if transactions really took months to show up.    I can imagine, in the past, in some places, where paper vouchers were used, things might take longer, but the merchant wants their payment (and then so does Amex) so I'm sure that no-one delays if they can help it.     And maybe these people were looking at paper bills (rather than online) so you don't see the purchase for a while, although it has really been processed.

A similar case used to (and maybe still does) happen with international roaming on cell phones.   If you roamed on a small carrier in a remote country, it might take two bill cycles for the charges to appear on the final bill (and I guess most of us here look at credit card online transaction detail more than online call detail!)

[mkhan1093]

I've used both a charge card and credit card overseas, and in neither case do they show up in pending but they post in the same amount of time it would take a normal US transaction to post from pending. My available credit on the credit card did go down as soon as I swiped the card though.

[noobody]

Pending foreign charge from Amex usually post in 2-3 days, without showing on web site.
But if you sign up email alert, you would get an email with amount in foreign currency instantly.