How to Get a US Amex as an Australian: The Real Route

How to get a US Amex as an Australian comes down to one Amex programme most guides describe wrongly, and one sentence in Amex's own FAQ that decides whether it is worth doing. Australia is on Amex's list. Your points are not coming with you.

How to get a US Amex as an Australian: the programme that does it

Amex runs a service it calls Global Card Relationship. Most blogs call it Global Card Transfer, which is misleading, because nothing is transferred. Amex describes it as a "Card Member-only service" that "makes it seamless for Card Members to apply for a new American Express® Card in select countries".

Read that again: you apply. It is a new application, in a new country, assessed on its merits. What the programme changes is what Amex is allowed to look at while assessing it.

Amex lists the steps in four lines on its own page:

• Shop Cards available in your new country
• Sign in to your Account, so we can access your Account history
• Apply using the address in the country you are moving to
• We may use your Account history to make a decision on your application

That fourth line is the whole mechanism, and the word doing the work is may. Your Australian Amex history becomes available to the US decision. It does not become an approval.

Australia is on the list

Amex's country selector on that page names United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore, France, Hong Kong SAR, Netherlands and India, plus a link to further countries. So the Australia to US direction is one Amex itself publishes, which is more than can be said for most country pairs people ask about.

What you actually keep

One thing, and it is the reason this is worth doing at all. Amex states: "You can keep your original Member Since date on your new Card when you apply as a Card Member."

If you have held an Australian Amex since 2012, your US card can say 2012. For anyone who cares about Amex tenure, that is a decade of history you would otherwise spend a decade rebuilding. Amex also mentions an Instant Card Number "if eligible", so the card can be usable before the plastic arrives.

What you do not keep, and nobody tells you

Your points. Amex's own FAQ on the same page says it plainly: "If you earn rewards on your current and existing Card, you can continue to keep, and redeem rewards through this current and existing account only."

Australian Membership Rewards stay in the Australian account, redeemable through the Australian account. They do not land in a US balance. If you have been accumulating a large balance specifically so you can move it, that plan does not work, and you should spend or transfer those points on the Australian side on their own timetable.

Your Australian card also stays open. Amex says: "Your existing Cards remain open and unimpacted and will only be cancelled upon your request. If you maintain accounts in multiple countries, please note you are responsible for all balances, fees and liabilities on open accounts." Two cards, two annual fees, two sets of liabilities, until you close one.

The part Amex does not publish

We are not going to fill these in, because Amex does not state them on the page and the figures circulating are guesses:

• Whether a Social Security Number or ITIN is required for the US application.
• Whether any US credit history is needed alongside the Amex history.
• Which card products are eligible.
• How long you must have held the Australian card.
• Any approval rate. Amex says it "may" use your history. That is the only commitment on the page.

Anyone quoting you a minimum tenure or an approval likelihood for this is quoting their own experience, which is worth hearing, or inventing it, which is not.

Why Australians are asking right now

Because the Australian rewards market changed on 1 October 2026. The Reserve Bank cut the interchange cap on domestic consumer credit cards from 0.8% to 0.3%, which is the revenue that funds points, and removed surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa.

A detail worth knowing: Amex came out of that review comparatively well. It is not among the designated networks for the surcharging decision, and the RBA kept the commercial card cap at 0.8% specifically to support "a more even playing field between Mastercard, Visa and American Express". The RBA also noted that issuers expected consumers to "switch to products such as American Express, which are not subject to the RBA's interchange regulations".

So the honest framing is not that Australia is cutting Amex. It is that Australian Visa and Mastercard rewards are being cut, and that Amex's advantage is on a clock: the RBA explicitly deferred the question of surcharging Amex to a later review of three-party schemes.

Where the US address comes from

Step three of Amex's own process is "Apply using the address in the country you are moving to". That is the step most Australians get stuck on, and it is also the step that has nothing to do with Amex.

A US address that stands up to an application generally comes with the rest of a US setup: an LLC, an EIN, an ITIN if you need a US taxpayer number, and a US business bank account that onboards non-residents. That stack is useful on its own terms if you are earning in US dollars. It is also what turns "I would like a US Amex" into an application that has somewhere to be sent.

Founders Credit handles the first three as one piece of work, which is the part that is actually buildable. The fourth is Amex's decision and always will be.