Concierge credit cards

Concierge credit cards are an exclusive type of credit card that offers a “concierge” service.  This concierge is the equivalent of a personal assistant who will do many of the menial chores such as send flowers to the spouse and book a restaurant.  Unlike a traditional personal assistant these assistants are dedicated to a number of people and work from a distant location.  Some of the more unusual services that have been sought have been as a personal shopper for clothes that have appeared in movies and getting access to otherwise sold out events. 

Concierge services are reserved for the very top end of the credit card market, beyond the gold card level.  There are three main providers, American Express, Visa and MasterCard – all of these are distributed under their own brands to differentiate them from the mass consumer focused cards that are the main business of the credit card providers.

Many of these concierge services are offered to high earners, the so called “mass affluent” who are not used to employing personal staff for non-manual tasks.  They are funded through a combination of annual fees of up to $500 and higher interest rates.

The market leader in this service is American Express, which offers the American Express Platinum service.  Variants of this card have been offered since 1984 and are more central to American Express’s offering than the other credit cards.  American Express’s main market tends to have a higher worth and earning capacity than typical Visa and MasterCard customers, and American Express has for years advertised itself as offering a better service.  Naturally the American Express Platinum card holders make up a larger proportion of the total number of card users than the other credit card providers have.

Visa Signature is the concierge card offering of Visa.  These are usually co-branded affinity cards of high end stores, travel companies and airlines.  This route to market means that it has a strong travel related offering.  Visa also offers a Black card that is marketed as being “beyond gold”.  While this is not strictly a concierge card it does sell itself as offering access to some level of exclusivity, such as travel lounges at airports.

MasterCard’s offering is the World Elite MasterCard.  This is offered to people earning $250,000 or more, the highest income limit of all the concierge style cards.  It also co-brands many of its cards with travel companies and stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue.