@mkhan1093 wrote:So in my personal Amex experience, credits (which I guess would be the same as cashback redemptions) actually adjusted my remaining payment as well as my total balance only up until a month or two ago. My $10 Gold credits, Amex offers, etc would reduce my payment required. This stopped happening around February so I assumed that they changed something internally. Interesting that DPs exist for this all the way back to early 2019 and is apparently a well-known Amex policy. Oh well
In the thread provided by @Remedios there were posts from @K-in-Boston and @FinStar and if I understand them correctly I believe in this case, I will need to pay the entire $115 in order not to incur any interest charges.
Amex cash redemption is applied to the current statement cycle. In this case the statement cycle runs from May 28th to June 27th and the $100 I redeemed on June 1st will be reflected in the statement that will post on June 27th and is due in July. And if I spend $120 between May 28th and June 27, the June 27th statement will have a Statement Balance of $20 and the Minimal Payment will also be $20.
Anyway I will pay $115 this time and see.
That is correct. Your cashback will be applied as a credit toward any charges made during this statement cycle, but does not satisfy payment on your previous statement balance, minimum or otherwise.
Yes, this is what you have to do. You must pay what you would have paid had you not redeemed any cashback. You might end up with a negative total balance, which you can ask for either a deposit back into your connected bank account (sometimes they don't do this) or mail you a check.
@mkhan1093 wrote:So in my personal Amex experience, credits (which I guess would be the same as cashback redemptions) actually adjusted my remaining payment as well as my total balance only up until a month or two ago. My $10 Gold credits, Amex offers, etc would reduce my payment required. This stopped happening around February so I assumed that they changed something internally. Interesting that DPs exist for this all the way back to early 2019 and is apparently a well-known Amex policy. Oh well
Weird. I don't recall that being the case that Amex Offers or "benefit credits" (need to distinguish those from merchant credits aka refunds) ever reduced my remaining statement balance or affected minimum amount due, only the Total Balance and ultimately the next statement balance. I usually just schedule a payment for whatever the statement balance is right after statement close, so it's quite possible I just never noticed that being the case.
On my April 27 Platinum statement, I had a New Balance of $1,365.43. Same as Total Balance at that moment.
I was trying to wrap up a promotional POT balance, and had turned off autopay so I had been setting payment amounts less than Pay In Full for the last few months.
On or about April 29, I scheduled the payment of $1,365.43 to be taken for May 16.
Charged new amounts totaling $204.07
Received credits for CAP and a promo, $307.72.
On May 16, they adjusted the scheduled payment to take the actual amount owed at that moment of $1,261.78, to bring the account to exactly zero.
So you should schedule the payment amount of $115 to be a few days before the due date, and AMEX will sort it out for you. This method also ensures you don't trigger any unintended interest costs by trying to be cute paying short.
No need to worry about maths.
@eastsea wrote:My Amex BCE's last statement was posted a week ago with a balance of $115. After the statement post about 3 days ago I redeemed cashback of $100. Now the card has the these numbers:
"Remaining Statement Balace" is still $115
"Total Balance" has been reduced to $15
"Minimal Balance" is still $35
So I am a little confused, which number should I pay if I do not want to pay any interest and of course I also do not want to considered late.
If the "remaining statement balance" is $115, then I would pay $115.
If that moves down to $15, then I would pay $35, the minimum payment due.
