Confirmed: United TravelBank purchase triggers $200 annual airline fee credit on Amex Business Platinum card

The Amex Business Platinum card comes with a $200 annual airline fee that, according to Amex, is meant for “incidental fees, such as checked bags and in-flight refreshments [that] are charged by the airline to your Business Platinum Card.”

Even though this credit is meant for incidental purchases, for the last two years — 2023 and 2024 — I’ve received the credit by putting $200 in my United TravelBank.

This is the third year I’ve used my Amex Business Platinum card to fund my United TravelBank and I’m happy to report that this purchase triggered the card’s $200 annual airline fee credit. This is great news for travelers like me who usually don’t spend much, if anything, on incidental purchases.

The credit took three days to post to my account, and the reason that I have two $100 purchases is that United doesn’t allow for a $200 TravelBank purchase (you can either put $100 in or you can put $250 in, but nothing in between).

A word of caution: just because the United TravelBank purchase triggered the $200 credit for me today doesn’t mean it will for you or forever — so, in other words, your mileage may vary. With that, if you’re putting money into your United TravelBank using your Amex Business Platinum card, just keep in mind that the worst-case scenario is that you’ll be stuck with $200 in your United TravelBank that you won’t be reimbursed for.

Also, keep in mind that you’ll need to select United as your airline of choice for the $200 airline fee credit (which you can easily do by calling the Amex Business Platinum customer support line on the back of your card).

Edit: I’ve received a few comments and e-mails asking me to remove this post (saying that writing about this could cause Amex to get rid of this “loophole”). I totally understand the concern and considered that before writing this post — but using the Amex annual airline fee credit to fund your United TravelBank purchase has been covered by many sites and on many blogs other than mine (for example, Thrifty Traveler, Frequent Miler, Upgraded Points, DansDeals, FlyerTalk, and Reddit, just to name a few). These are all sites with significantly higher readership than my blog, so I sincerely doubt mine will be the straw that breaks the camels back here. Also, I sincerely doubt that Amex doesn’t already know about this “loophole” and would argue that it’s not actually a loophole, but is something that Amex knows about, for whatever reason, has decided not to tinker with for the time being.

How will you be using your Amex Business Platinum airline fee credit?