Reader Question: How Does The American Express Green Card Credit For CLEAR Work?

I received an email with a Reader Question about the $100 CLEAR credit from American Express Green Card following my recent article about the annual travel credits on various credit / charge cards.

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After the overhaul of their Green Card product in the fall of 2019 Amex offers $100 annual credit towards CLEAR membership, $100 statement credit per calendar year for purchase made through LoungeBuddy, and triple Membership Rewards points on travel including Amextravel and OTAs, transit and restaurants.

Last week I wrote a quick reminder about using the credits before the end of this month as many of them will expire December 31st and then refresh for the new calendar year on January 1st.

Following that I got an email from our reader Caroline asking about how to apply the credit:

Hello, I keep the amex green card and want to use to clear security credit as you mentioned. How do I do that, is there any promotion code to apply?

You just purchase the CLEAR membership on the website, no promotion code is necessary.

The way it works with CLEAR and Amex is basically a direct reverse credit following the purchase and after I paid my fees it just took a day to come back:

CLEAR offers preferential prices for United Mileage Plus members and even as a moderate Premier Gold I got a discounted price of $109. I was also able to combine this with the Cyber Monday promotion of 6 extra months for renewing my membership.

Bottom line is I paid $9 for 18 months of CLEAR. Am I going to use it? Definitely at some point but I’m not in North America right now and haven’t been for the past 12 months. In any case renewing the membership didn’t cost me anything thanks to the Amex credit.

Conclusion

The American Express Green Card that carries a $150 annual fee now offers you a $100 credit for CLEAR (as well as $100 for Loungebuddy passes). These two credits more than mitigate the annual fee if you take them anywhere near face value.

Together with the 3X earning rate on restaurants, travel and transit spend it’s probably one of best cards in the entire Amex portfolio even though it’s not a piece of shiny metal.