Apply for a U.S. card without SSN/ITIN via Amex Credit Passport
U.S. no doubt has the best credit card offers in the world, and many people from overseas are very keen on applying for one. It’s tricky though, as unlike in the UK you usually need to provide a tax number (SSN or ITIN) when submitting an application, and you may not have one if you still live abroad or have recently moved.
There’s a well-known workaround though – if you are an Amex cardholder overseas, you could apply for a U.S. Amex card via its Global Transfer service. You don’t need an SSN / ITIN or any credit history in the U.S. – all you need is a U.S. residential address and a phone number, and Amex will use your internal credit record with them to evaluate the application.
It’s usually a very smooth process, and everyone I know who’ve tried succeeded, although some of them were asked for some sort of bank verification.
It’s not until recently that I became aware of another service that Amex U.S. offers – Credit Passport, provided by Nova Credit.
The idea is quite similar to Global Transfer, which aims to facilitate the application for people who don’t have a tax number yet in the country. However,
- You don’t need to be an existing Amex customer
- Your credit history in the current residential country will be used for the application
Currently nine countries are supported: United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Dominican Republic.
Note that the application only triggers a soft pull in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, Australia, India and Dominican Republic, which means it doesn’t negatively impact your credit score.
To be honest I don’t think it’s a very useful feature, as all listed countries issue their own Amex cards, with the exception of Dominican Republic. My speculation is that having an Amex card and doing the Global Transfer would have a much higher success rate.
However, if somehow you don’t have an Amex card, or the Global Transfer doesn’t work out, you may want to try Credit Passport to apply for your first U.S. credit card. A reader from Canada has just reported success so it’s a viable route.
TAP Portugal: London – Brazil in business class for £1,200
TAP Portugal has launched an Executive (business) class sale for flights from Europe to Brazil. You can depart from multiple cities (including London) and arrive at Rio or Sao Paolo.
Many dates are available from September to March.
London – Rio de Janeiro, Nov 24 – Dec 4
London – Sao Paolo, Feb 21 – Mar 1
You need to book by May 16. Stopover in Portugal (Lisbon or Porto) is possible, but your itinerary will be repriced.
Flying to the US? Take 15% off your next TAP Portugal flight
TAP Portugal has semi-frequent 15%-off discount codes, and another one is making its rounds which may be useful if you are travelling to the US soon.
You could check the (UK-version) landing page here.
- Book by April 10
- Travel between April 18 and May 16
- Depart from Europe for the following destinations: Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco.
- Limit one use per person
- 15% discount against the base fare and carrier imposed surcharges (but not taxes)
- Not valid for Discount or Executive (Business Class) fares
Discount codes are market-specific. For UK departures use USA15GBP, and for other European countries it would be USA15EUR or USA15CHF etc.
Enter the code when searching for the flight, and below is an example of the discount being applied:
Shame that it doesn’t work on business class tickets. For economy class, the code should work on all fares except Discount, a.k.a the hand-baggage only fare.
Travel business class from US to France and Caribbean for only 34,500 miles
I wrote an article to talk about the boomerang tricks for redeeming Flying Blue miles. Basically Flying Blue’s redemption chart is zone-based, and the pricing doesn’t change even if your interchange airport is out of the zone.
A reader just approached me about an interesting itinerary he found:
Instead of flying directly from Seattle to St Marin in the Caribbean, you can do it the long way by stopping over at Paris first. The flight time will be MUCH longer, however you get to travel in business class with both Delta and Air France. Even better, you only pay 34,500 miles plus €183 in fees which is dirt cheap!
As I mentioned, this is because the pricing is based on your departure / destination and Paris doesn’t play a role here. You can also book SXM-CDG-SEA the same way but surcharges will be much higher.
You may be able to use this itinerary to just travel to Paris (cheaply) and drop the second leg. If you are handbag only there shouldn’t be any problem, otherwise make sure there’s a long transit time so you can convince the airport agent not to check through your luggage to the final destination. Also beware that if you do this too often, you may be on Flying Blue’s radar and get into trouble.
Unfortunately the max stopover time is 24 hours so you can’t really break the itinerary into two proper trips. However, if you are very keen on going back to travel after having been trapped home for the last year, this can be an attractive deal.
IHG launches free night voucher promotion for UK and US new members
IHG has just launched a ludicrous offer for new members residing in the UK and US.
You can access and register here.
- New member only (or signed up within the last 30 days)
- Register by July 31
- Make two qualifying stays by September 6
- A free night voucher is awarded (up to 40,000 points value), which is valid for 120 days
The two stays must be paid (i.e. not award stays), and can be done at any brand except Mr & Mrs Smith.
It is genuinely a very good offer, and if you have a frequent travel companion who isn’t an IHG member yet you should consider signing them up for the next stay. Don’t forget that IHG is also running a free night voucher offer for its Ambassador program as well. If you sign up to both, purchase the Ambassador membership and stay twice (including an InterContinental/Regent/Kimpton stay) then you’ll get two free night vouchers!
Hilton points have just become much more valuable – but only in the US
Since the introduction of dynamic award pricing, Hilton’s Honors programme has become much less interesting, or at least to some of us. With the removal of publicised award chart, Hilton has devalued its awards quietly a few times since, and it is more and more difficult to get outsized value when spending points.
A Hilton’s representative has just posted a thread on Flyertalk, talking about lowering down the award pricing at many US hotels. At the first glance, I almost discarded it as a useless piece of propaganda – given its dynamic nature, of course the award price will drop as the cash price has crashed in the country.
However, after I spent some time digging around, there are genuinely some great news here!
[Better Award Exchange Rate]
Hilton’s dynamic award pricing works out as follows: given a hotel’s best flexible rate (BFR), an award night costs roughly 10,000 points for every $50 charged. The rate is slightly different per region and hotel, but it’s largely the same globally.
Surely there’s also a cap that applies to each hotel, which takes effect when the cash rate is very high, but let’s not talk about it here.
The exchange rate seems to have become a lot more attractive in some US cities. Take Orlando for example, for a Saturday night in October you could easily get $60 of value out of 10,000 points.
You may think the difference is not huge and could just be an acceptable error. However, if you move the date to March next year, some hotels are priced at almost $100 per 10,000 points!
[More Standard Awards]
Although points almost have a fixed value now, Hilton didn’t go fully revenue-based like Accor. Usually you can only redeem points for standard rooms (Standard Award), and for better rooms the awards (Premium Award) are priced much worse.
It looks like many US hotels are very flexible with the definition of “standard rooms” now. Again in Florida, Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort has opened up their Junior Suite for redemption:
Although to the fair its fare difference to the basic room type is small. (Again, you are getting $87 per 10,000 points which is amazing)
In Seattle, if you have a look at the Charter Hotel, the four lowest room types are priced differently both in cash and in points.
However, if you click through, all four room types are Standard Awards. Not only does it mean it offers a better exchange rate, but also the “5th night free” benefit applies in this case for Hilton Silver members and above.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find anything similar in Europe. I guess US is being hit by the pandemic very hard at the moment so Hilton is trying to experiment something new here. Hopefully, at some point it gets rolled out to the rest of the world.