Agreements as filed with the CFPB. Not an offer of credit. How we read them
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American Express National Bank

Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Cardmember Agreement

What this agreement does and does not disclose, and why that gap matters when you are comparing what a card costs.

Before you read the numbers.

This agreement prices the card as the Prime Rate plus a margin rather than as a fixed APR. The figure shown is that margin in percentage points, not an APR. The rate actually charged moves whenever Prime moves, so the cost of carrying a balance changes without the issuer amending the agreement.

Disclosed rates and fees

Every figure below was read from this issuer's filed agreement. Anything the filing does not state is left out of this table rather than shown as zero.

Terms as disclosed in the filed agreement for Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Cardmember Agreement
Penalty APR26.74%
Annual fee$550
Late payment feeup to $40
Foreign transaction feeNone
Cash advance feeEither $10 or 5% of the amount of each
Grace period25 days
NetworkAmex

Analysis

American Express National Bank prices Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Cardmember Agreement as a margin over the Prime Rate rather than as a fixed APR, so the filing discloses the spread but not the cost. This page explains what that means and sets the other disclosed terms against the corpus.

What this filing discloses

What follows is drawn entirely from American Express National Bank's CFPB filing for Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Cardmember Agreement. It is issued on the Amex network and the filing runs 12 pages.

The filing is explicit about a penalty rate, an annual fee line, a late payment maximum, a foreign transaction fee and a grace period. It is silent on a purchase rate, a cash advance rate and a balance transfer rate.

Confidence in the parse of this filing is moderate rather than high, so the figures below are best checked against the original.

Priced off the Prime Rate

This filing does not quote finished APRs. It states margins — numbers that are added to the Prime Rate to produce the rate actually charged. Everything below should be read that way.

The filing's margin figures come to 26.74 points for penalty pricing.

The practical consequence is that this card has no single disclosed price. The cost of carrying a balance moves whenever the Prime Rate moves, in lockstep and without notice, and no arithmetic on this page can tell you what it costs today.

The disclosure table in this document parsed only moderately cleanly; the numbers are reported as read, with that caveat attached.

Where the fees are

Holding the card costs $550 a year before any transaction takes place — about the 99th percentile among agreements in this index that state a fee.

Taking cash against the card means a cash advance fee of $10 or 5% of the advance, whichever is greater. Advances under roughly $200 are charged the flat $10; larger ones are charged 5%.

Foreign transactions carry no fee. Only about 22% of the filings here that disclose a foreign transaction fee set it at zero, so this is a genuine point of difference.

Penalty pricing and late fees

The maximum late fee is $40 — roughly the 72nd percentile of the late fee ceilings disclosed across this index.

Grace period and minimum charge

Purchases carry a 25-day grace period: pay the statement in full inside it and the purchase rate never applies. That matches the 25-day median across the corpus almost exactly.

How it sits in the issuer's own range

American Express National Bank has 25 agreements indexed on this site.

Its $550 annual fee is higher than 17 of the 24 sibling filings that state one.

What you cannot learn from the filing

This page cannot tell you a purchase rate and balance transfer terms, because the filing's disclosure table as read does not contain them.

It is worth being explicit about scope: these filings record terms and pricing. They say nothing about rewards programmes, cardholder benefits, promotional offers or who the issuer will approve, and this review does not speculate about any of it.

Reading the agreement yourself

Everything here is a reading of the filed agreement, 12 pages of it, which is linked above and which governs. Terms also change between filings, so the date on the document matters.

In short

What can be said is how this card is priced, not what it costs. That distinction is the whole of the analysis here, and the agreement is the place to confirm the index it uses.

The source document

This page is a reading of one document: the cardholder agreement American Express National Bank filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Where the two disagree, the filing is correct and this page is wrong.

Open the filed agreement (PDF)

Applications are handled by American Express National Bank, not by us. We do not take applications and cannot say whether you would be approved.

Go to American Express National Bank

Other cards from American Express National Bank

All 25 agreements from American Express National Bank

Where this card sits

Groups this agreement qualifies for, by its own disclosed terms:

Comparable cards from other issuers

Closest disclosed margin over Prime among cards in the same groups.